On Tuesday, 24 September, Grade 11 History students partook in the Europeana Cultural Heritage "mini-transcribathon" event at the Vienna National Library. The organization's mission is to "share cultural heritage for enjoyment, education and research."
Europeana has collected millions of primary documents, many handwritten, that must first be digitally transcribed so people can search the database of nearly 58,000,000 items. Working in small teams against some seasoned transcribers, our students were in a competition to see who could transcribe the most characters. While it was clear that our students were engaged and enjoying themselves, we were all pleasantly surprised to learn that a team of VIS students won the contest! The afternoon also included talks from individuals who participated in the 1989 Revolutions, Dr. Wolfgang Mueller, history professor from the University of Vienna and others.