The document discusses using crowdsourcing platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk to distribute transcription tasks from digitized manuscripts to online workers. It details the Written Rummage project which used this method to transcribe pages from Frederick Douglass' diary. While over 70 pages were transcribed, only around 30 were fully transcribed and proofread due to issues with the process and economics of the crowdsourcing model. Improvements are needed to streamline workflow and ensure transcription quality.