In Her Own Hand: The Gladys Arnold Project

In Her Own Hand puts Gladys Arnold's journals and correspondence beside draft transcriptions that still need a careful human eye. Choose an English or French sub-collection, compare the page with the proposed text, and repair the places where ink, cursive, or context defeated handwriting recognition. The reward is a sharper window onto a Canadian reporter who watched Europe slide into war.

What is In Her Own Hand: The Gladys Arnold Project?

Gladys Arnold wrote from a remarkable vantage point: a Saskatchewan journalist who became Canadian Press's Paris correspondent and remained in France as the Second World War began. This University of Regina archive project opens selected journals and letters from the 1930s through the 1980s, including exchanges with friends, relatives, and colleagues. The job is editorial archaeology. A handwriting-recognition system has taken the first pass, but faded paper and individual letterforms leave plenty of dents for people to straighten out. Volunteers compare image and text, correct the draft, mark passages that remain illegible, and submit their version for repeated human review. The eventual aim is not merely neat typing; it is a searchable route through roughly 1,400 pages of firsthand history.

What you can do there

• Choose a correspondence or journal sub-collection
• Correct a handwriting-recognition draft against the scanned page
• Mark uncertain passages and submit a human-reviewed transcript

Why we picked it

The project makes close reading useful without draining it of intimacy. One moment you are untangling a stubborn loop of ink; the next you are inside a private exchange written by someone reporting on fascism, war, and exile as events unfolded. The machine draft removes some drudgery, while the page still needs enough judgment to feel unmistakably human.

How to get the most from it

Pick a correspondent or language you are comfortable with and compare one line at a time. Use nearby words and repeated letter shapes as clues, keep the existing draft only where the scan supports it, and mark genuinely illegible text with the project's unclear tags. Finish a page in one sitting because partial transcripts do not autosave.

Good to know

The project is close to completion, so a fresh page may not always be available. English and French material are offered, and every transcript receives several human reviews plus a team check. The overview does not document phone support or detailed accessibility behavior, and the platform cannot save an unfinished transcription for later.

Who made it, and when?

University of Regina's Dr. John Archer Library and Archives is the credited creator or organization. The earliest supported launch date we found is June 18, 2026.