Research Skills Working in the Archives

Research Skills Working in the Archives 17 November 2010 [email protected]

I. TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS

A good transcription does not just record the words of the text. It is a word-picture of a document, and should say something about the conditions under which a text was produced (is it written in a cheap copybook or on vellum? Did the author write fluently or cross sections out and write them again?) as well as what appears to be the final product. If you are working in an archive, you will often be making the only copy in existence of a text. It has to be accurate, so that it can be of use to the larger scholarly community, and so that it would provide a record of the document should the original be destroyed.

These are some of the usual conventions used in transcription:  If you are adding punctuation, letters, or even words, which you believe have been left out of your source-text accidentally, put your addition in square brackets, [thus]  If part of the text is lost or illegible (the page is torn, the writing is crossed out, the ink has blotted), then put it in a pair of braces, with a dot for each illegible letter of letter space, {...}  If part of the text has been deleted (e.g. the author has drawn a line through it or scribbled it out), transcribe it, but distinguish it from the rest of the transcription . Even if you can’t read the deleted text, you should still note its presence.  If the writer has squeezed text in between the lines, or in the margin, mark it \like this/  If the writer has put something into italics or bold, mark it ///like this///

These conventions are typical, but sometimes vary, depending on the individual circumstances you face. For instance, in a text with an unusual number of forward slashes, you might not find it helpful to use /// to denote italics, and would find some other method. Regardless of how standard or otherwise you believe your method to be, you should always make a note of the conventions you have followed at the foot of your transcription, so that it remains accurate despite (inevitable?) failures of memory.

Find out more about transcription on ‘English Handwriting 1500-1700: An Online Course’, at http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/ Research Skills Working in the Archives 17 November 2010 [email protected]

II. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Materials provided: (a) W.B. Yeats, ‘Wild Swans at Coole’, in MS and typescript (b) Sally Potter, extract from the screenplay for Orlando (1992) in two versions: ‘Earliest Draft—typewritten’, pp. 7-13 (starting at http://www.sp-ark.org/SPA0000693/) and ‘Finished screenplay’, scenes 4-8 (starting at http://www.sp-ark.org/SPA0000213/ ).

1. In respect of the Yeats’ poem, what decisions might you need to make if you were transcribing or quoting from this manuscript?

2. How would you reference the manuscript?

3. The excerpts from the screenplay for Orlando show substantial revision. Are there, in your opinion, losses as well as gains so far as the final product is concerned?

4. What insights does the ability to compare two drafts of the text afford the reader? You might think about whether the motifs which disappear in the final version might, nonetheless, clarify your sense of Potter’s intention for the film. On this note, you might also ask about the theoretical implications of archival work: does it necessarily privilege ideas of authorial ‘intention’? How does that fit with your own approach to a text?

5. SP-ARK is a new model for the archive. Dr Chris Berry heralds it as follows on its homepage: The SP-ARK vision of social learning gives us a glimmer of the future today. Instead of locking archive materials away and restricting availability, it promises ready access to anybody anywhere with a computer and the internet. Furthermore, the solitary archive user is transformed into a producer and a member of a community by the ability to build pathways of connections and commentary through the material. In the process, the cinema is extended from a fixed object to be viewed into a dynamic, interactive, and growing network of digital debate and active learning. What is gained through digitisation? Is anything lost? Does this new project change the nature of research?