Announcing Sourcery Peer-to-Peer

Archival research isn’t easy. Finding what you’re looking for is only half the battle; getting to it, often in a distant city or even country, is the other. Many of us have hit this wall—a crucial letter or a rare photograph that is tantalizingly out of reach.

For years, we’ve wrestled with this problem, and today, we’re thrilled to announce a solution: Sourcery Peer-to-Peer, a new version of the app built to help you get the archival documents you need—or get paid to help someone else get theirs.

It’s a simple idea: you need a document scanned, and someone local to the archive can do it for you. Sourcery eliminates the need to email all your contacts or beg favors from friends of friends. Currently, the service is available for documents located in archives in Boston and New York, with more cities coming in 2026.

Here’s how it works:

• A Researcher finds a document they need in an archive far from home.
• They submit a request for the material through the Sourcery app.
• A Sourcerer—a user near the archive—claims the job.
• The Sourcerer visits the archive, captures a high-quality scan or photo of the document, and uploads it to Sourcery
• The Researcher receives the scans and the Sourcerer is paid for their service.

That’s it. One person gets the information they need, another gets paid for their time.

To get started, simply visit sourceryapp.org and create an account. The app is accessible via any web browser (Android and iOS versions are coming soon). The same account lets you act as both a Researcher and a Sourcerer, so you can switch roles as you see fit.

As an open-source, not-for-profit, and community-driven project, Sourcery is constantly evolving. Your feedback is crucial to making it work, so please let us know what you think.

Got questions? Our FAQ has answers, and if you’re still curious, you can email us at info@sourceryapp.org. You can also follow us on our socials to stay up to date on new developments.

Sourcery: Any Archive, Any Time