Psst! Over here. We have a something for you... 

Will you join us in “Operation Brum” and help bring Birmingham’s records to life?

You may remember back in 2024 Birmingham Museums Trust launched an online activity called Documentation Detectives. Its goal was to transcribe our historic accession records which describe the city’s vast collection of artworks and artefacts both modern and ancient. At the same time, we wanted to encourage people from all over to take part in museum collections activities that are often found behind closed doors. 

So far, our global volunteer community has typed up over 85,000 records! As we release our next 10,000 records, we are launching a dedicated local chapter to connect directly with local Brummies and Birmingham Museums visitors. That is why we are calling this next Documentation Detectives chapter Operation Brum.  

Taking part means helping to turn these paper records into clear, usable digital information. Many are over 100 years old and some only exist on paper, meaning much of our collection information cannot be accessed digitally by the public. With your help we can get closer to our goal of having an open publicly accessible database for everyone to explore.  

You don’t need any museum knowledge or volunteering experience to take part. You can transcribe one record or hundreds. Five minutes or five hours. All you need is a computer and a bit of curiosity. 

Taking part is simple

1. Follow our exclusive link to the Operation Brum Zooniverse page.
2. Click ‘Classify’ or the yellow folder to open a historic record  
3. Type up what you see  
4. Click ‘Done’ to submit your transcription 

As a bonus we also have a couple examples below of what objects you might find in Operation Brum.  

A short intro video for Documentation Detectives can be seen below. 

PS - This project can only be found through this webpage in order to create a local chapter. We recommend bookmarking this page so you can easily get back to Operation Brum whenever you like.