transcribing etiquette

Question

I'm new to transcribing for history hub. I've been searching in vain for a guide on transcription etiquette. While transcribing for another organization I received an assignment of 10 pages. I transcribed the content. It was all mine to complete. History Hub seems to be a free-for-all where anyone can add to or edit at will. If so, that's ok with me. I'm just worried that if I start in the middle of a document that I'm stepping on someone else's toes or violating some aspect of community etiquette.

I hope that there is a guide already compiled on sharing and editing work. If so will someone send me the link?

Thanks!!

Pete

Henry Rosenberg · Answer

I have come across a different problem. People approving pages that are incomplete as in the pages were never fully transcribed. Also, pages accepted as completed where there are a tremendous number of [?] and errors. If you cannot decipher a page, leave it for someone else. And do not accept pages without reviewing them. It does no good for LOC to publish pages only to find out they are embarrassingly poorly done. The important thing is to have fun and not to feel pressured to complete anything but just help move the process along to the best of your ability. I recently finished a section that I had been through before. As I went through it, I realized that people were accepting my pages without reviewing them. Typos I made and [?] I left were never edited. That is not helpful and puts more pressure on us to be perfect the first time. None of us should feel pressured. We are a team and should add something to every page we work on. Of course, that can include accepting a page where you feel it is well done and complete. Sorry for the ramble but I have been doing this a while and felt my comments might be helpful to you and LOC. Have a good weekend all. Henry

Charles Trentelman · Answer

as i understand it, both crowd and history hub are under the Library of Congress. To put it colloquially a la Jack London, Crowd is the gang of hardy volunteers doing their thing in the gold fields, digging and uncovering nuggets where they lie. History Hub's crowd forum (where we are now) is the bar where they go to talk about it afterwards, swap stories, hear the old guys give sage advice (And you really need to listen to them) and generally get reassurance. As far as getting assignments of designated work, not here -- the LOC puts up masses of work to do and folks just grab and do as they can.&#160; I"m having fun exercising my cursive skills on letters to Teddy Roosevelt. Saw one today in copperplate. Have at it and have fun and good luck figuring out that shorthand.

Samantha W · Answer

Oh! I see, those are actually sitting in the "In Progress" folder. Sorry, I have actually never seen anyone do that on the campaign I'm working on, so I was confused by the question. My mistake. Thank you for explaining, Abigail, and sorry to add to the confusion, Lauren!

Diane Estes · Answer

This final acceptance of blatantly incomplete work with [???]'s in it or made-up words seems to be fairly common in the TR papers, and it's obviously problematic. Just recently I've taken to doing a first quick pass of an entire section of the documents and moving all the obviously incomplete documents from "Ready For Review" back into "In Progress" when I see them. Then they won't get approved by someone not really looking carefully at them -- and any reviewer can still grab them to complete them. Then I go back to the start and work slowly through them all, carefully editing each one.&#160; If the problematic entries haven't been cleaned up by the time I get to them, I work to get them cleaned up. It's slightly inefficient for my time to do this, but I think it's better for the body of work in the long run. Less reopening, fewer errors, etc. And in truth a "fast review" just looking for incompleteness can be done really quickly, as it's essentially a binary question -- No/Maybe -- where all the Maybes stay untouched in the Review folder.

Lauren Algee · Answer

This is a really smart strategy, Diane. Thanks for sharing it! As Henry notes below, there will always be some pages that can't be fully deciphered, and as a human-powered project, we try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But we absolutely encourage you to keep taking a closer look at completed pages when it seems appropriate and to send us those you would like reopened. The By the People team has been talking through the benefits and challenges of adding functionality to allow volunteers to reopen pages in still active campaigns on their own.&#160; Right now it's not technically possible for a few reasons, but we do hope that feature can be added down the road! Lauren

transcribing etiquette

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