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Index Cards Transcription - Transcribathon July 2021 Volunteer ActivityVolunteers helped LAGANZ to correct the transcription of 4838 typewritten index cards describing our book, pamphlets and manuscript collections by correcting the optimal character recognition (OCR) text. Our Transcribathon event ran from 10 to 24 July for volunteers across Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas, and we achieved our target in 8 days! Thanks again!
What Was InvolvedAs part of our digitisation initiative we scanned 7500 index cards from our card catalogue and prepared approximately 4838 to fully transcribe because these were the essential ones to incorporate into a future online database. Digitisation is important to enable online database access to the descriptions of items in our collections; at the moment researchers must visit the Archives in Wellington or ask a curator to search for them in the card catalogue. We used an online tool called From the Page to make it as easy as possible for volunteers to type corrections of the transcription (OCR'd) text errors as they view the picture of each scanned index card. What's next for the 4838 index cards' data? Key Steps to Getting StartedUpdate at 19 Oct 2021: Index card projects in From the Page are now closed for editing. So these instructions are provided for information only. We asked volunteers to sign up to From the Page to get started on correcting index cards, as follows:
Transcribathon Events via Zoom and In Person 10 to 24 JulyOver two weeks from Saturday 10 July till its conclusion on Saturday 24 July volunteers helped us transcribe as many cards as possible. The cards had been digitised, but we needed volunteers to help fix the 10-15% of words that had not been correctly recognised during the optical character recognition (OCR) process. We asked volunteers to join LAGANZ organisers in Zoom sessions on 10 July and 24 July to find out how to get started and to stay in touch with progress. LAGANZ organisers answered questions from volunteers via Zoom and by email. The Zoom sesssions were also a good opportunity to ask our trustees and curator about the Archives. Volunteers could do cards over the two weeks or join in the final big push to complete the QA of corrected cards over a few hours on Saturday 24 July. Volunteers were able to share their favourite cards describing collection items and joined in discussions in Zoom chat about the language we use to describe collection items and how we manage, collect and provide access to the collections. LAGANZ's curators and trustees shared (via photos and videos) some items from the collections at the Zoom sessions on 24 July. We were excited about the opportunity to connect with volunteers all over New Zealand, as well as many from the international From the Page user community who wanted to support LGBTI+ projects. Whether its 10 or 100 cards, all contributions were welcome.. Transcribathon ScheduleWe set up a series of Zoom virtual meetings/events and one Wellington in-person drop in session. We did not record the Zoom sessions (for privacy reasons), but a video link was provided to help volunteers get started. One-on-one Zoom sessions were arranged by contacting Gavin Hamilton.
YouTube Videos: Getting set up | Correcting cards | QA stepsWe've recorded short YouTube videos - to help you get started in From the Page and perhaps help with QA. These are available in LAGANZ's Index Cards Transcribathon playlist. You might like to Subscribe to be alerted to future videos.
Stages of Index Card Image Transcription/CorrectionThis might help you visualise what we were trying to achieve, with volunteers' help! We have loaded images of index cards into From the Page ...The optical character recognition (OCR) of the text in the image is not perfect.There are corrections and formatting changes required to the text that the OCR process has extracted ...
.. so that we end up with corrected text looking like this:
Your help with checking that what you see on the card is transcribed correctly will make a tremendous difference!See what we do next with the index card data - transposing it into structured data (XML and CSV) - on the page for our earlier Posters Index Cards pilot. Contact for InformationFeel free to make personal contact with Gavin Hamilton - board@laganz.org.nz, +64 21 0200 7913 - to find out more about this activity. If you are not already signed up, we encourage you to sign up to both of these mailing lists:
Funding Support for Digitisation from the Rainbow Wellbeing Legacy FundWe have received in August 2020 a grant from the Rainbow Wellbeing Legacy Fund that has enabled us to fund the digitisation of our index cards and a subscription to From the Page and other tools. We are very grateful for the Fund's support. |
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Last updated: 19 Oct 2021 |
Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand (LAGANZ) | Te Pūranga Takatāpui o Aotearoa |