Cursive seems to be a lost art, but there’s an opportunity for history enthusiasts, who also still value the traditional handwriting style. The National Archives is looking for volunteers to transcribe more than 200 years’ worth of documents written in cursive.
It’s for a collaboration with the National Park Service to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.
The materials include Revolutionary War pension records, immigration documents from the 1890s and Japanese evacuation records.
Cursive writing is traced back to ancient Roman scribes, which eventually evolved into the modern forms of cursive used today.
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But since the rise of computers, phones and tablets, handwriting has become less common.
“Reading cursive is a superpower,” the community manager with the National Archives catalog, Suzanne Isaacs told USA Today.
Many states are still teaching cursive to kids. California and New Hampshire were the most recent states to pass legislation making it mandatory.
According to Education Week, 24 states in total require cursive writing to be taught in schools for students K-12.
That’s fewer than half of what was required 25 to 30 years ago.
Meanwhile, some states like Maine and Montana leave it up to the individual school districts to decide whether to require students to learn cursive.
For those interested in helping the National Archives, people can register for a free account online with the National Archives and click on “citizen archivist.”
Then those registered can begin reading available documents that are ready to be cataloged.
