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transcribing handwritten materials



While we're on the subject of transcription . . .

I'm about to start transcribing part of a large collection of 19th
century letters. We're building a digital library with scans of the
letters and searchable transcriptions. There's no doubt it will be
time consuming, and it is very difficult to estimate how much time a
page of handwriting will take to transcribe. Having said that, I
would be interested in hearing of other people's methods for
estimating the time involved. Some handwriting reads very quickly .
Other handwriting -- not so quickly, to say the least. At times I
think we'll have to just make an educated guess about a particularly
scrawly word, and there will be discoloration and occasional losses
so some of the words will be missing entirely.

This brings me to my next question. How can I indicate clearly when
I'm guessing? I've seen some online transcriptions of manuscript
materials where the text was laced with editorial asides in red. But
these were mostly limited to [sic] after uncorrected misspellings. I
haven't seen any examples of how people indicate when they're
guessing about a word. Because we're also going to have scanned
images of the letters themselves, I suppose I could decide that users
can see for themselves if a particular word is hard to decipher. But
it just doesn't seem right not to point it out when there is some
reason to doubt the transcription.

Another question: what do you think of using a document stand to hold
the letters beside the computer? Naturally many letters will be too
fragile to be stood up on their bottom edge. When the condition of
the paper allows it, I've thought of using a stand that doesn't have
a clamp, which might damage the paper. Someone in my department
pointed out that the letters might slump too much. Does anyone have
experience with this, or is it potentially too taxing for the
documents? What if they were placed in a mylar L-sleeve or something
similar to give them more support?

Thanks . . .

Claire

--


Claire McGuire
Digital Archives Fellow
Quaker and Special Collections
Haverford College
Phone: 610-896-1283

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