If you could give new transcribers just ONE piece of advice, what would it be?
My advice would be— refer often to the general How to Transcribe notes, and also the project-specific How to Transcribe. If you aren’t sure-- ask a question on this great new forum! Enjoy the journey!
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Focus on your special skill (reading cursive, a foreign language you speak fluently, knowledege of a certain field) and topics that are of interest to you; you will become hooked!
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Use context clues when you can’t decipher a word. Read the full sentence and before/after to set the scene. Compare the letters to other words you could transcribe to see if that helps. If it’s at the end of the page, save and move ahead to the next page to see the continuation of the sentence. I find it easier to work within the same set of documents for multiple pages rather than jumping around because you get to learn the grammar, phrasing, place or people names, and handwriting that you can apply to multiple documents.
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If you are doing handwriting, the first time through a page, do the words you see and [?] the rest. The second time try to figure out the context of the page and as you go through again, you will probably get more words. Sometimes if you alter the brightness, the word may hit you. If you are a stickler like I am and want to get help, post the page on this forum. That way, if a more experienced transcriber can do the page more easily, you can then read the page and start to learn the intricacies of the writer’s handwriting. Also, many handwriting tendencies carry over for different writers such as not crossing final t’s, long s’s and the way final k’s are written. Letters such as x and k tend to look weird and are missed but as you do more you will recognize them more easily. Sorry Lauren, I am not good at listing just one thing. Sad emoji.
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A few more tips. Do not guess unless you are fairly sure. I am working in a section of James Garfield where the transcriber had trouble deciphering the pages and is basically writing their own document, filling in words they think will fit. If you can’t get it, there’s no shame in punting.
Also, if you are working on a sentence and it is not making sense, it is possible one of the words you transcribed is wrong. Many times, I have done a page and reviewed a sentence and realized one of the words was wrong, jamming up the sentence.
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Always read the description of the campaign; it contains important information.
Don’t rely on OCR.
I often google names and the year i am looking for. It usually gives me some insight on the full name and spelling. Also it is helpful for spelling street addresses. Addresses don’t change through the years.
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Great advice already listed! I would just add the following:
- Very often specific campaigns have reference documents that can be very helpful (sometimes even including a complete list of key names, a catalogue of correspondence, etc!). For the Roosevelt campaign I often back-engineer signatures by looking up my best guess at a name in the correspondence catalogue - often trying a few before success - and verifying that there is in fact a letter by that individual on that date. Likewise if there is a letterhead on prior pages, that can be used to verify signatures. Similarly, Google can be helpful in this regard. If you have a letter from a particular title (Ambassador to Spain, President of a major company, Secretary of the Interior, etc etc etc…) those can be researched and cross-checked against a document.
- And a plea…please don’t append a note saying “[signature]” to a handwritten signature; or “[picture]” to a graphic. It’s not the standard, and I see it all the time.
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Definitely agree, Diane-- both 1. and 2.! I also will add that our new AI tools are very helpful finding less-well-known people who might have lived at wherever-addresses in whatever-town in, say, 1834. Traditional search engines may not pick these up. I always double-check what AI gives me, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised over the past few months.
Political Graveyard is a great site too for obscure people, but it can be a bit of a hassle to navigate as it is quite overwhelming.
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