Fix-It+ Interview: Volunteer-powered Human-In-The-Loop transcription for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

In today’s guest post, Lauren Algee, a Senior Digital Collections Specialist & By the People community manager at the Library of Congress, interviews the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) Archives Outreach Manager, Meghan Sorensen. 

We just celebrated seven years of By the People, which invites virtual volunteers to transcribe historic texts. But did you know there is another crowdsourced transcription program for Library of Congress collections? Fix-It+ volunteers review and edit AI-generated transcripts for video and audio from the AAPB, which is a collaboration between GBH and The Library of Congress to preserve public television and radio. Learn how Fix-It+ enhances Library collections and how you can get involved in this interview with AAPB Archives Outreach Manager, Meghan Sorensen.

Lauren: Can you give us an elevator pitch for FixIt+ and its mission? 

Meghan: FixIt+ is a volunteer transcript correction platform and open-source project maintained by our team at GBH for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB). Its mission is to make historic public media more accessible by inviting the public to help update and correct computer generated transcripts in a way that feels easy and engaging.  

Every correction helps transform decades of radio and television content into fully searchable, discoverable resources for researchers, educators, students, and lifelong learners. By participating, volunteers directly support the AAPB’s mission to preserve the stories of our communities and our nation’s history, ensuring this rich record of public media can be enjoyed, studied, and learned from for generations to come.

L: Why are transcriptions important for this collection? 

M: Correct transcripts are essential for helping AAPB programs find their way to the people who are looking for them. Many of our records arrive missing descriptions, and some without even a title. Without accurate metadata and keywords, these recordings simply will not appear in search results, even when someone is actively trying to find them. 

Most historic public media programs were never transcribed, which means they are difficult to identify, discover, classify, or use in classrooms and research. Creating transcripts enables all those and more. 

Having accurate transcripts: 

• Makes audio and video content fully searchable.
• Improves accessibility for Deaf and hard of hearing users.
• Enables viewing in noisy environments or with sound off.
• Supports educators who rely on text based materials.
• Helps researchers pinpoint specific moments, topics, and voices.
• Increases discoverability of related items.
• Strengthens long term preservation by creating a durable text record of fragile media.

Without transcripts, much of our catalog remains hidden. With them, the archive becomes a living, interactive resource which can be discovered, shared, and explored by anyone. 

L: FixIt+ uses a “human in the loop” workflow – can you explain what that means for this project? 

M: “Human-in-the-loop” means volunteers improve transcripts generated by computers instead of relying solely on the program’s output. When new records are digitized, the AAPB team generates a transcript using AI tools. Even though automated speech recognition has improved dramatically in recent years, it still contains many errors, especially with older recordings, regional accents, noisy audio, or background music. Volunteers step in to review, correct, and refine those transcripts, bringing context, accuracy, and nuance that machines cannot provide. 

This approach is especially effective when a relevant community organizes efforts to update its station’s content. Local lingo, dialects, and unique names often get lost in the mix, and it’s best to rely on folks who know them well. Technology gives us a great jumping off point, but it is our volunteers who make the real difference. 

L: Why should readers give FixIt+ a try? 

M: FixIt+ offers a meaningful, low barrier way to contribute to public history and to support the mission of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Plus, it’s fun! 

Volunteers can: 

• Help preserve and surface stories that might otherwise remain buried.
• Participate from anywhere, for however long, with no special training or login required.
• Support accessibility and equity in public media.
• Track total lines corrected and compare with others.
• Learn from decades of historic broadcasts while they work.
• Make a direct impact as every correction improves search results and public access.

L: What are some of the most interesting items or moments volunteers have surfaced in the archive? 

M: Our volunteers love to transcribe programs that they remember from their youth or upbringing. Whether it’s a beloved children’s program like ZOOM (above) or a news broadcast covering an event they lived through, it’s always special to have volunteers come up to us following an event to share how meaningful it was to revisit and correct an episode that spoke to them in the archive. 

At our recent transcriptathon at the GBH studio in the Boston Public Library, many attendees shared memories of growing up with ZOOM in the 1970s, watching it in their parents’ living room or knowing a neighbor who auditioned for the show. 

We also have volunteers who have corrected transcripts of interviews featuring their loved ones and, in the process, learned new details about their family’s past or about events in their community they had never heard before.