Tierline Lens

Find the record behind the words: read scans on your device, correct them, and connect passages to archives and your research.

Tierline Lens is a research companion for people who work with historical sources: historians, students, archivists, educators and community researchers. It helps you trace a passage back to the records behind it, read scanned documents carefully, and keep every piece of evidence tied to where it came from. QUICK LENS Select a passage on any web page and press Alt+Shift+K, or right-click and choose "Find connections with Tierline." Quick Lens opens in the side panel with related archival records and supporting evidence, and saves the passage with a citation that leads back to its source. PAGE STUDIO Import scans and PDFs (PNG, JPEG, WebP, PDF) and transcribe them on your own computer. The built-in reader recognizes printed English in the Latin alphabet. Every reading is kept: you correct and review the text, the machine's original reading stays beside your corrections, and each passage stays anchored to its place on the page. Spellings are never modernized and names are never normalized. You can also transcribe pages by hand, including pages the reader does not support, with the same history, review and citation. EVIDENCE THREADS Investigate possible historical connections, compare alternative interpretations, and examine the evidence for each one. EVIDENCE DESK Put passages and historical sources side by side to compare them closely. ONLINE ARCHIVES (OPTIONAL) With your permission, search the Library of Congress and the Internet Archive from inside Lens. Online search is off until you turn it on, you see and can edit every search before it is sent, and Lens lists every request it made during the session. RESEARCH WORKBENCH Organize source documents, collections, notes and citations, and export your work. Back up your whole library to a file and restore it at any time. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account. No advertising. No analytics. No document upload service. Your imported documents, transcriptions and research library stay in your browser. Lens connects to the internet only when you search an online archive or view an image from one. Note: Page Studio reads printed English. It does not read handwriting or Indigenous languages. Privacy policy: https://tierline.org/lens/privacy