Transcribe is the Nova Scotia Archives’ collaborative online project where the public can transcribe handwritten historical materials that document more than 300 years of the province’s history. These transcriptions will make the collections more visible and accessible.
The Archives is starting small with a test project. They plan to add more documents as they learn more about the crowd-sourcing transcription technology.
How to get started
To participate, you start by searching for documents to transcribe. A number of images of documents and their titles immediately appear on your computer screen for you to choose.
You will be asked, “Would you like to contribute to transcribing this document?” Click on that box to connect to the transcription tool. Next you will see the edit pencil in the corner of a page of the document. Click on that to start. You can zoom in and out on the document to see it better.
At this point, you have made no commitment to transcribe, so give it a look.
Transcription guidelines
There are a few simple rules to follow when transcribing historical documents.
- Copy the text as is, including misspellings and abbreviations;
- No need to account for formatting (e.g., spacing, line breaks, alignment); the goal is to provide text for searching and readability;
- If you can’t make out a word, enter “[illegible]”; if uncertain, indicate with square brackets, for example: “[town?]”; and
- Save often.
Registration is not required. All you need to do is click the I’m not a robot to start transcribing.
Choose one of many historical documents on the Nova Scotia Archives website and start transcribing.
I gave it a try, and it is very easy to transcribe… especially if you select an easy-to-read document. The FAQ section is useful too.
Transcriptions of entire documents, once complete, reviewed and approved, will be downloaded and added to the Archives’ online collections
Find out how Transcribe works here. Nova Scotia Archives encourages feedback on Facebook and Twitter.
The Royal BC Museum has a similar transcribing initiative.
No matter which end of Canada you pick — Nova Scotia or British Columbia — transcribing is a good thing.
that was interesting – I went to the link and worked on a couple of letters – What a great opportunity to enjoy some history through transcribing!
I agree. It is so easy to transcribe, it can become addictive.