Ur Crowdsourcing IV
I just KNOW that some of my friends would be interested in this, and I also know that some of *their* friends might be too. Rhi? I'm thinking of you. Alyss? You too. Plus other librarians, historians and interested parties... so I am copying Whafford's post and pointing you all in the direction of something REALLY cool. Go look. And, if you want to, sign up. But at least pass the word!
Originally posted by whafford at Ur Crowdsourcing IV
The UrCrowdsource site went live today. In two categories, letters and field notes, 349 documents are currently allocated to be transcribed, but more are on their way. I don't have metadata or relationships between documents associated yet, but am working slowly to put that together. I'd hoped to allow the public to do that as well, but the way the system works, annotations like that are part of Omeka rather than part of Scripto so it would require extra logins that would only complicate matters. For now, the transcriptions will be a great addition and I hope that many people will participate. And the organization at the moment is in reverse order, i.e. latest document first followed by earlier. Filenames show association as well, so 1923-4-17a and 1923-4-17b are part of the same document, written in 1923.
There's a lot of really interesting material contained in these notes and letters. For an example of what is ahead, check out this Museum blog entry by one of my local volunteers, the one who scanned many of the documents that are now available for transcription.
Meanwhile, I encourage you to go to UrCrowdsource.org and look through the documents. If you want to transcribe, you'll need a Scripto login which can be obtained by emailing me or by using the Sign Up link on the UrCrowdsource main page. I've already sent emails and automated passwords to those who have given me their email addresses and I've sent tweets to those who expressed interest but who did not send me their emails. I'm afraid I sent too many tweets that essentially said the same thing--I lost followers because of that--but I do want those who are interested to know about the site.
If you have sent me your email but did not receive a password, check your spam filter. The password is sent through an automated mediawiki program that might get caught in such things.
There are a few steps to go through before you can transcribe, but I've put instructions up on how to do it at each major step of the way; I hope they are clear. If there are problems, let me know and I'll try my best to fix them.
When you receive a password, it is a temporary one for the underlying mediawiki site. It must be changed in mediawiki to show that you are going to continue. After that, all work will be done on the Omeka site with that password entered into Scripto. Again, instructions should guide you through the steps.
Finally, there are transcription guidelines on the site to show what to do with undecipherable words, formatting, and special characters. You might want to keep a separate window open with that page up so you can refer to it quickly.
Thank you so much for helping to transcribe these old documents. It would take much longer without you.
Originally posted by whafford at Ur Crowdsourcing IV
The UrCrowdsource site went live today. In two categories, letters and field notes, 349 documents are currently allocated to be transcribed, but more are on their way. I don't have metadata or relationships between documents associated yet, but am working slowly to put that together. I'd hoped to allow the public to do that as well, but the way the system works, annotations like that are part of Omeka rather than part of Scripto so it would require extra logins that would only complicate matters. For now, the transcriptions will be a great addition and I hope that many people will participate. And the organization at the moment is in reverse order, i.e. latest document first followed by earlier. Filenames show association as well, so 1923-4-17a and 1923-4-17b are part of the same document, written in 1923.
There's a lot of really interesting material contained in these notes and letters. For an example of what is ahead, check out this Museum blog entry by one of my local volunteers, the one who scanned many of the documents that are now available for transcription.
Meanwhile, I encourage you to go to UrCrowdsource.org and look through the documents. If you want to transcribe, you'll need a Scripto login which can be obtained by emailing me or by using the Sign Up link on the UrCrowdsource main page. I've already sent emails and automated passwords to those who have given me their email addresses and I've sent tweets to those who expressed interest but who did not send me their emails. I'm afraid I sent too many tweets that essentially said the same thing--I lost followers because of that--but I do want those who are interested to know about the site.
If you have sent me your email but did not receive a password, check your spam filter. The password is sent through an automated mediawiki program that might get caught in such things.
There are a few steps to go through before you can transcribe, but I've put instructions up on how to do it at each major step of the way; I hope they are clear. If there are problems, let me know and I'll try my best to fix them.
When you receive a password, it is a temporary one for the underlying mediawiki site. It must be changed in mediawiki to show that you are going to continue. After that, all work will be done on the Omeka site with that password entered into Scripto. Again, instructions should guide you through the steps.
Finally, there are transcription guidelines on the site to show what to do with undecipherable words, formatting, and special characters. You might want to keep a separate window open with that page up so you can refer to it quickly.
Thank you so much for helping to transcribe these old documents. It would take much longer without you.