Frederick Douglass is a noted American social reformer and abolitionist, and Douglass Day is a global event in his honour that gathers thousands of participants together to create freely available resources for deeper learning on Black history. CLBC has participated in the annual Douglass Day transcribe-a-thon since 2024, welcoming community members into our Vancouver space, while also hosting and supporting remote participation throughout BC.
This year the focus of the transcribe-a-thon is the texts generated for, about, and by the Colored Conventions which took place during the Reconstruction era. This is an unprecedented collection of records from the historic Colored Conventions movement. The Douglass Day event will help make these vital materials more accessible and searchable for future generations. The records have been made available through the collaboration of the Douglass Day organizers and the non-profit Zooniverse platform.
Librarians, as information professionals, are keenly aware that most of the books published, purchased, and housed on library shelves have historically been written by white authors. The records and writings of notable Black individuals remain underrepresented or absent from the historical record of their time. Douglass Day directly addresses this disparity, while also making a meaningful, crowd-sourced contribution toward bringing critical Black history and thought into the public domain. In participating in this event, we are reminded that social justice is action, not just an idea, and this work extends far beyond courthouse walls.
The event takes place on February 13, 2026, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm. At the Vancouver courthouse library, we will be live streaming the first hour of the official event, then transcribing the materials, and learning more about their purpose. Please bring your own laptop. For more information about the Douglass Day event and its history, visit https://douglassday.org/. If you have further questions, please email us at Training@courthouselibrary.ca.