The digital archive collects, digitises, and exhibits records of the war from all over Europe, obtaining resources from national collections, film archives and unpublished records from the public. By bringing these sources together, Europeana 1914-1918 holds not only a vast collection, but also a unique perspective of the historic conflict, showing every side of the battle lines and with insights from each point of view.

To date, more than 16,000 stories of WW1 have been generously contributed to Europeana 1914-1918 from the public. Scanned at over 180 Collection Days across 22 European countries and by uploads to the online portal, the archive exhibits over 200,000 personal items from these stories.

It is these items that we need your help transcribing.

But with so much material out there, we are counting on the public to lend a helping hand.

As a volunteer transcriber, your contribution will assist in preserving these important documents, making them readable and searchable for years to come. Your work will also help enrich our knowledge of the First World War, invaluable for future research and education.  With each word transcribed, you help us uncover more and more secrets of the war hidden in the forgotten pages of hand-written text.

Transcribathon Europeana 1914-1918 offers you the opportunity to fully immerse yourself in these original, one-of-a-kind documents, and at the same time become yourself a valuable part of this important digitisation process.

The development of the first prototype transcription tool in 2014 was funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM). Based on this experience and knowledge the Transcribathon website was developed in 2016 by Facts & Files and Olaf Baldini/Piktoresk, and funded by the European Commission.