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Transcription

Getting Started

Once you sign up for an account, a new Correct tab will appear above each page.

You can create or edit transcriptions by modifying the text entry field and saving. Each modification is stored as a separate version of the page, so that it should be easy to revert to older versions if necessary.

Transcription Conventions are available at the bottom of each transcription tab's page.

Transcription Tutorial

Transcription Strategies

Here are some strategies for approaching transcription. You can follow these as a step-by-step guide or pick and choose the methods that work best for you.

  • Try to find answers to some basic questions before you start. Context can help you understand what the writer is saying: Who wrote this document? When? What was the writer’s profession? Where were they writing from? Who are they writing to?
  • If you are unsure of a word, write your best guess then highlight the word and select the unclear button.
  • Read odd-looking words aloud, phonetically. The sounds may help you recognize an unusually spelled word

Finishing Transcription

If you need to stop working while you are in the middle of a document, you can use the Save button to save your progress. The document will be available for anyone to work on until it is marked as "complete."

If you feel confident in your transcription and think that it is finished, select the green Done button. This will save your transcription and change its status to "complete" which moves it on to the next phase of work.

If you feel that you've done the best you can, but there are a few things you have questions about, you can leave a note on the document in the Notes And Questions section at the bottom of the page

Subjects

For this project, we are marking Authors, Places, Organizations, and Document Titles.

Autolink

We have seeded the project with a list of commonly found subjects. Clicking the Autolink button will refresh the transcription text with suggested tags. For example, if John Doe is on our list of Authors, text that looks like:

"A poem by John Doe" will Autolink to, "A poem by [[Doe, John, 1850-1930|John Doe]]".

This is an imperfect tool, and all added tags should be reviewed for accuracy and adjusted as necessary. If a tag looks wrong, delete the suggested tag and leave the brackets, or remove the brackets if the word should not be tagged at all. For example:

"He was a [[Knight, William, 1893-1923|knight]] in shining armor" is an incorrect tag for "Knight".

Tagging Subjects

To manually tag a Subject within a transcription, surround the text with double square brackets [[like this]]. For example, say that a work has this text:

"I am surprised not having heard from you since you arrived in New York. Will you please let me hear if Mr. Pickering fixed you up satisfactorily and the amount of money you received on account."

We would mark up the People and Place subjects like this:

"I am surprised not having heard from you since you arrived in [[New York]]. Will you please let me hear if Mr. [[Pickering]] fixed you up satisfactorily and the amount of money you received on account."

When tagging Authors, do not include titles and honorifics in the tag, unless they share a name with another mentioned relative, or have a common word for a name. For example: [[Mr. Noice]], [[Mrs. Noice]], and [[Captain White]].

Document Titles are the titles of the poems in this collection.

When tagging place Subjects, use as much of the place term as possible. For example: [[Akron, Ohio]] instead of [[Akron]], [[Ohio]]

If you tag a Subject that is not already on the list, you will be prompted to add it to a category (Author, Document Type, Places, Organizations).

Avoid tagging subjects that the document is not about. This could be mentions of celebrities, mentions of far off lands. However, when in doubt: tag it! Project managers will clean up errant tags before the collection is finished.

Tagging and Metadata Tutorial