Ur Crowdsource update
The crowdsourcing website for documents concerning the site of Ur in southern Mesopotamia went live Friday, 14 September. In the first week of being up, we received more than 40 volunteers and transcribed more than 100 documents. That may not sound like much when the total number of documents already scanned (5,000) and the estimates of those yet to be scanned (at least another 5,000) are considered, but I find it very encouraging and am most pleased. I placed only 450 documents up as a test of the willingness and enthusiasm of volunteers, so that means that a quarter of my test was completed in only one week! And I'm getting more volunteers every day as more people find out about the site through Ancient World Online (special thanks to Chuck Jones there), MetaFilter, and other services and twitter users that have picked up the announcement and carried it to more and more potential volunteers (thanks to all of you!). To me, that makes this an overwhelming initial success and I have already doubled the sample size on the site to more than 800 documents.
I've noted volunteers from many countries including England, Germany, Australia, Israel, and Canada. And I've made contacts with people who are studying Ur in universities in many places, such as Bern, Switzerland. So the effort is truly international and growing, and it is making far-reaching connections I never expected.
Most transcribers are gravitating toward the letters from the museums and from the field. Those are often the easier items to transcribe, since many are typewritten, but there are handwritten ones as well. We've made it through nearly half of the sample of those items and I don't have many more at the moment. I'm having more scanned at the end of this week.
Meanwhile, the field notes are getting less attention. That's to be expected, perhaps, since they are often hard to read. They tend to be somewhat jumbled, as notes are wont to be, and they contain many drawings interspersed as well as many later annotations. I've tried to cover best practices for transcription in the transcription guidelines section and I'm getting suggestions from active participants that have helped greatly. I think the field notes will have the most potential impact on our understanding of the archaeology itself, but the letters have great historic interest. There are even some telegrams that Woolley sent in code (like one answering a query about a particular person, whether he would make a good director for a new site; Woolley replies in code that he would not recommend that person).
Whatever we get transcribed is a bonus to me. I'll have to do the QC of the transcriptions as time allows, but I'm looking forward to that. For now, I want to extend thanks to everyone who has signed up so far, and encourage anyone who hasn't but who might be interested to check it out at UrCrowdsource.org
I've noted volunteers from many countries including England, Germany, Australia, Israel, and Canada. And I've made contacts with people who are studying Ur in universities in many places, such as Bern, Switzerland. So the effort is truly international and growing, and it is making far-reaching connections I never expected.
Most transcribers are gravitating toward the letters from the museums and from the field. Those are often the easier items to transcribe, since many are typewritten, but there are handwritten ones as well. We've made it through nearly half of the sample of those items and I don't have many more at the moment. I'm having more scanned at the end of this week.
Meanwhile, the field notes are getting less attention. That's to be expected, perhaps, since they are often hard to read. They tend to be somewhat jumbled, as notes are wont to be, and they contain many drawings interspersed as well as many later annotations. I've tried to cover best practices for transcription in the transcription guidelines section and I'm getting suggestions from active participants that have helped greatly. I think the field notes will have the most potential impact on our understanding of the archaeology itself, but the letters have great historic interest. There are even some telegrams that Woolley sent in code (like one answering a query about a particular person, whether he would make a good director for a new site; Woolley replies in code that he would not recommend that person).
Whatever we get transcribed is a bonus to me. I'll have to do the QC of the transcriptions as time allows, but I'm looking forward to that. For now, I want to extend thanks to everyone who has signed up so far, and encourage anyone who hasn't but who might be interested to check it out at UrCrowdsource.org