There is a book of spells from 1612 waiting to be read. It lies in the archives of the Newberry Library in Chicago, handwritten in a seventeenth-century cursive that very few in the world could decipher. And this, more than any theoretical argument, says everything about the problem the library is trying to address.
The case
Since 2013, the Newberry Library in Chicago has launched the Newberry Transcribe project, an appeal to volunteers capable of reading cursive to make accessible – and above all searchable – the immense collection of manuscripts, letters and diaries that cover four centuries of American history. The project started with the Civil War letters, in view of the sesquicentennial, and from there expanded to include the entire archive.
During the pandemic it experienced its moment of greatest momentum, with thousands of people, closed at home, looking for something sensible to do. Curator of Modern Manuscripts Alison Hinderliter put it simply: “People were looking for something meaningful, and crowdsourcing worked.” Today that moment has passed, and the project continues slowly, not because interest has waned, but because the pool has dwindled, and there are fewer and fewer people who know how to read italics.
A skill that is becoming a privilege
In the United States, we’re talking about 2010, cursive was removed from the mandatory requirements of the Common Core — the curriculum shared between states — without the long-term consequences really being considered. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust had anticipated it already in 2022, in an interview with NPR:
We will become dependent on a small group of expert translators to read all types of handwritten documents, from contracts to legal documents, including the papers and letters of our ancestors.
It is a form of illiteracy in reverse, so to speak: not the inability to write, but the inability to read what is already written.
What Newberry holds
The archive awaiting the transcribers is a labyrinth. There are firsthand accounts of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the diaries of visitors to the 1893 World’s Fair, the correspondence of writers such as Nelson Algren and Sherwood Anderson—the latter known, among other things, for handwriting that is almost indecipherable even to experts. And then there is that seventeenth-century book of spells, which still awaits its reader.
As Literary Hub reports, the library currently has 146 registered volunteers, although thousands have passed through over the decade. The number is low due to the amount of material to be covered, and the appeal is open: anyone who knows how to read cursive can register on the Newberry Transcribe platform and start making their contribution (it is considered a voluntary activity, therefore no compensation is foreseen).
