The 1884 Diary

The transcription is still in review. Check any reading against the page scan before quoting it.

What it does

Theodore Roosevelt's pocket diary for 1884, from the Library of Congress, as a book you can page through. Every one of the 410 scans is here, cropped to the page edge, with a page-curl reader, a transcription panel beside each page, an 1884 timeline, search across the entries, and deep zoom into the handwriting.

Each scan has one structured record, and every mark on the page is kept with whoever made it: the printer's dated headers and calendars, Roosevelt's own writing split into entries, tallies, tables, and lists, and later archival pencil marks kept separate. People, places, and animals are recorded as written, and any identification is marked uncertain unless the page settles it. A review workflow, curator's notes with draft and approved states, and a kiosk mode make it ready for a gallery as well as the web.

What it can do

• Page-curl book reader with the transcription alongside each page
• Deep zoom into every scan with OpenSeadragon
• 1884 timeline and full-text search across entries
• Structured page records separating printed text, Roosevelt's hand, and later archival marks
• Review workflow with a flagged-readings review file and per-page review status
• Curator's notes with draft and approved states, and featured highlight pages
• Kiosk mode with large touch targets, no outbound links, and an idle reset
• No CDN dependencies: libraries are kept in vendor/

Make it your own

Start by forking the repository into your own organization. Everything below assumes you are working in your fork, not this one.

1. Fork the repo and replace pages/ with your own diary or notebook scans, cropped and numbered in image order.
2. Write one record per scan in transcription/pages/<seq>.json, following transcription/SCHEMA.md and CONVENTIONS.md.
3. Run python3 tools/build.py to rebuild data/diary.json and the review file.
4. Review every reading against the scans, mark records reviewed, approve curator's notes, then set "showDrafts": false in data/config.json.
5. Enable Pages from main at the root and edit CNAME. Embed with ?embed, or run it in a gallery with ?kiosk.

Stuck on a step? Open an issue on the repository. Questions from people adapting these for their own institution are the most useful feedback we get.