Transcribathon

Facts & Files Digital Services GmbH develops digital tools for crowdsourcing and citizen science in cultural heritage. Founded in May 2018, the Berlin-based company works with cultural heritage institutions, companies and municipalities to help museums, libraries and archives engage communities with digitised collections. Its services include building flexible, standards-based platforms and supporting public participation in the transcription, annotation and enrichment of historical materials. The company’s technology can incorporate IIIF, APIs and artificial intelligence, including handwritten text recognition, as well as natural language processing and big data analysis to support metadata enrichment, clustering and classification.

A central project is Transcribathon, a platform where volunteers work with scanned letters, diaries, photographs and other historical documents. Participants can contribute transcriptions, tags and georeferences, helping make collections more accessible for research and education. Facts & Files also develops and collaborates on projects such as Europeana Transcribe, Berlin 1945 End of WWII and Donskoje 1950–1953.