Transcribe family letters and build a finding aid
At a glance
A genealogy volunteer used ChatGPT to draft transcriptions, connect references across letters and organize a manuscript collection. This workflow is listed under Family History, Document Organization, Genealogy.
- Agents / tools
- ChatGPT
SourceBuilding a tool for these workflows? See weekly rates.
What they did
1) Scan the letters and prepare JPG images. Upload each letter to ChatGPT and request a transcription that keeps line breaks and original spelling, marks uncertain words and leaves missing text uninvented. 2) Compare every draft with its image and correct errors. Research unfamiliar references before adding explanatory footnotes. 3) Use the corrected letters together to find repeated people, events and dating clues. Ask for all letters mentioning a particular event, then check the proposed connections against genealogical records. 4) Combine verified transcriptions and your notes into descriptions of correspondents, themes and relationships for a finding aid. Review those descriptions before adding them to the collection.
How it went
Across about 150 letters, grouping infant-death references helped reveal an earlier family loss that the volunteer then confirmed in records.
Worth knowing
Transcriptions and historical references required manual checking. The finding aid was still described as forthcoming, rather than already published.
