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A Crowdsourcing Platform for Wales

The National Library of Wales has developed a crowdsourcing platform that enables volunteers throughout Wales and beyond to help us interpret and enrich some of our national collections.

You can contribute to the platform from your home, or anywhere with wi-fi access.

Main tasks

  • Transcribing text.
  • Tagging people, places, events, etc.
  • Enriching data.

Essential

  • IT skills.
  • The ability to follow online guidelines.
  • Attention to detail. 

Desirable

  • An interest in Welsh history and culture.

Time and commitment

  • As little or as much time as you can spare us.

What next?

  • Select a current project to work on.
  • Sign up / Login.
  • Download the guidelines found on the front page of each project. 

Current Crowdsourcing Projects

Tag items from our drawing volume collection to make them easier to discover online.

Drawing Volume Collection

Collaborative Crowdsourcing Projects

Crowd Cymru is a collaborative project to develop an online volunteering community for Wales.

Volunteers are invited to tag, index and transcribe documents to make them more accessible for researchers.

Crowd Cymru

Pauperism and The New Poor Law in England & Wales, 1834–1930                           

A new research project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by The National Archives, Nottingham Trent University, and Aberystwyth University, is currently underway. The project is also supported by partner organisations including Anglesey Archives, Carmarthenshire Archives, Ceredigion Archives, Glamorgan Archives, Gwent Archives, North-East Wales Archives, the Powys Archives Service, and the National Library of Wales.

The project has been gathering information from digitised Poor Law records, initially focusing on Poor Law Union correspondence and a range of Poor Law Guardians’ Minute Books.

The above is taken from a letter in the Conway Poor Law Union correspondence, 20 March 1869.This is taken from a letter in the Conway Poor Law Union correspondence, 20 March 1869.

We are now seeking to build a collaborative team of volunteer editors to help read through these records and catalogue selected correspondence (including Welsh-language letters) and minute entries. Volunteers will need access to a laptop or PC with Excel and Word installed. Depending on location, you may choose to work directly with original documents at a local archive service or work online using digitised images, which will be made available via the document-sharing platform From the Page.     

We will provide a series of online workshops and training sessions to guide you through the work. In addition, there will be ongoing free sessions exploring various aspects of the Poor Law, such as workhouse discipline, records of paupers and relief, diet and provisions, financial support, and investigations into neglect, abuse, or complaints from staff and paupers—topics that regularly appear in the digitised archives.

If you would like to be part of this exciting collaborative project working with Poor Law archives, please contact:

Eilir Evans
Volunteer Co-ordinator
National Library of Wales

01970 632424 | eilir.evans@llyfrgell.cymru

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