To make readable and searchable its ever-growing digital archive of documents—such as handwritten Civil War journals and the painting diaries of Oscar Bluemner—the Smithsonian Institution announced last month that it is crowdsourcing the transcription of its materials.

“We are thrilled to invite the public to be our partners in the creation of knowledge to help open up our resources for professional and casual researchers to make new discoveries,” said Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough in a statement. “For years, the vast resources of the Smithsonian were powered by the pen; they can now be powered by the pixel.”

As computers cannot always decipher handwriting, the efforts of many volunteers will enable the Smithsonian to make major headway in the transcription of its materials, and anyone across the country will have access to the archive. “By some estimates, the volunteers are completing in a couple of days what it would take the Smithsonian months to complete without their help,” the statement continues.

Though crowdsourcing will speed up the painstaking process of transcription, there is potential for human error; to avoid discrepancies, the Smithsonian recruits several volunteers to transcribe each page, and a Smithsonian expert confirms the work’s accuracy. The result is the combined effort on the part of a growing group of people, and so far, 52,579 pages have been transcribed and posted (as of September 10, 2014).

The Smithsonian joins others who have crowdsourced for help to either digitize or transcribe its collections, including the New York Public Library and the UK National Archives. But this isn’t the first time the Smithsonian has requested the public’s assistance. The Smithsonian has technically been crowdsourcing since the 1840s, when volunteer weather observers sent climate data to its meteorological project, according to director of the Institutional History Division, Pamela Henson. “In some ways, we are continuing that tradition,” she said. 

To browse the projects and “challenges” put to volunteers to transcribe, or learn how to become a digital volunteer, check out the site.