If You Have This 'Superpower,' National Archives Needs You

History nerds, have we got a volunteer gig for you—especially if you're well versed in cursive writing. The National Archives is on the hunt for citizen archivists to review and transcribe at least two centuries' worth of historical US documents that are handwritten in the fading art of longhand script—a task more challenging than it might appear, as reading cursive these days has become a "rare skill," reports USA Today. "Reading cursive is a superpower," asserts Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives Catalog.

• Details: Documents reviewed by volunteer archivists run the gamut. Records "range from Revolutionary War pension records to the field notes of Charles Mason of the Mason-Dixon Line to immigration documents from the 1890s to Japanese evacuation records to the 1950 census," per USA Today.

• Challenges: It's not always an easy task, per USA Today: "There are cross-outs, things written on the other side that bleed through, strange and inventive spellings, old forms of letters (a double 'S' was sometimes written as a 'long s' and looked like an 'F'), and even children's doodles," as well as "many obsolete terms and legal words that can flummox even the most erudite readers."
• Cursive conundrum: Only 24 states mandate that public schools teach script to students in grades K-12, per Education Week. People notes that's "less than half of what was required 25 to 30 years ago," largely due to the rise of computers and text messaging.
• Interested? There's not even a need to apply if you're keen on diving into the archiving pool. After signing up and going through the tutorials, "just pick a record that hasn't been done and read the instructions," Isaacs tells USA Today. "It's easy to do for a half hour a day or a week."
• Non-cursive work: It's also OK if you're not an expert in the old way of writing—volunteers who can't read cursive can help add tags to already transcribed records, or they can simply learn as they go. "When they first sent me a document I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I can't read this," volunteer Christine Ritter tells USA Today. "But the longer you do them the easier it gets." Get started here.

(More National Archives stories.)