How do you digitise and transcribe your family’s letters?

How do you photograph old letters at home?

• near a window, without flash;
• the letter flat, the camera directly above, not at an angle;
• the whole page, margins included;
• the front then the back, and the envelope;
• one folder per box or per correspondent;
• no editing: upload the photos as they are.

The details: the photography guide.

How do you organise family correspondence?

One collection for the family, one shelfmark per box, per correspondent or per decade. The order of the shots is kept, and pages left “to sort” can be moved in batches to their shelfmark.

Letters in a language you can’t read?

Letters from an emigrant ancestor, in German, Italian or Polish, are transcribed in their own language, then translated into yours, page by page, with the context of neighbouring pages to piece together a sentence split across two sheets.

Handwriting that’s hard to read?

Family letters are often handwritten: the extra-strength reread reads old cursive handwriting, including the German script used before 1941 (Kurrent and Sütterlin). The text stays displayed next to the photo.

How do you find a name, a place, a date?

People, places and dates are picked out during reading and become searchable across all the letters; places are shown on a map and dates on a timeline.

How do you share the letters with the family?

An individual plan lets you invite up to four people as readers: they read, search and export without changing anything. PDF export gathers the letters you choose, ready to print.

The account takes a minute to open, a hundred pages free for a year.