How to Transcribe

Version 3.0 of April 15, 2016

Overview

You will find the digitizations of the Boston Athenaeum's books borrowed registers in the Digital Collections section of the Athenaeum's web site. You can download the volume you want to your computer, flash drive, etc.

We are starting the transcription project with Volume I (1827-1834). Let Mary Warnement ([email protected]) know what page or pages you would like to transcribe so that we do not have volunteers duplicating efforts.

Transcribing for Search

We are transcribing for search and retrieval rather than for manuscript fidelity. Having searched for and found a page of interest using our transcriptions, a researcher can, if they desire, refer to the scan of the found page for scriptural details.

The key to transcribing for search is uniformity across the transcriptions. To achieve this uniformity, we record in this How to Transcribe document guidelines for transcription. This is a working document. When you encounter a situation that is not sufficiently well covered in the document, bring it to the attention of the group for discussion, resolution, and inclusion in an updated version of the document.

1) General Guidelines

1.1) Unless otherwise specified, spell out abbreviations. For example, in transcribing dates spell out the name of the month.

1.2) Appendix A below is a table of special abbreviations that you may encounter together with how each of these special abbreviation should be rendered in your transcription.

1.3) All quotes are transcribed to what is being quoted. Thus, for example, with regards to the following three register entries

the month of the second entry would be transcribed as

April and the author of the third entry would be transcribed as

Pepys

Quoted text in the registers is indicated in a number of ways other than by the quotation mark as above including the character sequence do How to Transcribe

and a straight line.

1.4) Numbers are transcribed without ordinal superscripts such as st, nd, and the d in the above example.

1.5) If you can't come to a reasonable level of certainty of how to transcribe a patch of writing, enter the glyph [[?]] in your transcription to represent the puzzling patch.

1.6) Don't hesitate to share transcription questions and conundrums you encounter with fellow Encyclopaedists by bringing them to the monthly meeting or posting them to the group e-mail list. You may have surfaced a circumstance that needs to be regularized through group discussion and subsequently added to this document.

2) Page Number

2.1) The first line on a transcription page will be the page number of the register page as it appears in the upper left-hand or right-hand corner. The page number goes on a line by itself.

3) Patron Name

The next entry on the transcription of a register page will be the name of the person whose charges are recorded on the page.

3.1) Transcribe the parts of the name in the order in which they are written on the register page.

3.2) Render abbreviations you find in the name according to the table in Appendix A. For example,

would be transcribed as Felt Joseph B. Reverend

3.3) Alternative Names

We will discover that a single individual may be identified by alternative names. For example, Reverend Joseph B. Felt might be identified as Reverend Joseph Felt on a later page.. We will have be on the lookout for these occurrences and come to an agreement on a common transcription since if one is searching for all the charges of the good Reverend Felt one expects to get all of the charges or none of them depending on the search term. The situation we want to avoid is How to Transcribe

having to guess at alternative transcriptions in order to make sure one has retrieved all of the Reverend's charges.

3.4) Pages Without Names

Many pages have no name at the top because they are follow-on pages for a previous page that did have a name at the top. One of our tasks is to identify whose page it is and start our transcription with this name. Sometimes the follow-on page without a name is just a continuation of a previous page that has a name at the top. Sometimes the follow-on page is referenced by a page that has a name at the top. For example, "See page 345" on the referencing page. And sometimes it's not that easy. If you can't figure out whose page it is, bring the page to a meeting or post it to the e-mail list and we'll see if the group can come to a consensus as to who the page belongs to.

3.5) Pages with Multiple Names

It is not infrequent that there will be two names at the top of a page with one of the names being crossed out. For example,

Sometimes this means that the individual whose name is crossed out never borrowed any books and the page was reallocated to the other individual. More often it means that charges for both individuals are recorded on the page and the individual whose name is crossed out dropped their membership and this is what allowed the page to be reallocated.

In this situation, there should be two transcriptions of the page, one containing the name and charges of the crossed out individual and the other containing the name and charges of the un-crossed out individual. Figuring out which charges on the page go with which individual is another of our challenges.

4) Charge Entries

Each charge appears on a line by itself on the register page and is represented as single line in the transcription.

4.1) Data Fields of a Charge

The charges recorded on each page in the registers generally follow a fixed field format. To aid in detailed searching we reflect these fields in the transcription. The fields in the left-to-right order of appearance in each entry are:

1. Date the book was borrowed 2. Shelf number of the book 3. Author of the book 4. Abbreviated title of the book 5. Size of the book 6. Volume of the book 7. Date the book is due back

How to Transcribe

In the transcription of an entry the fields are separated by a vertical bar (|). This is the UPPER CASE or SHIFT of the backslash character (\) at the right edge of the QWERTY keyboard, right above the RETURN or ENTER key. Thus, the format of the transcription of a single charge looks like this:

An entry in the register may not include data for each of these fields. In this case, the field of this data item is left empty in the transcription

For example,

records the borrowing of Volumes 1 and 2 of Travels through North America by Bernhard, Duke of Saxe- Weimar on August 16. The book is stored on shelf 765 and is due back on September 14.

The transcription of this entry is

3.2) Dates

Notice in the previous example that the names of the months have been spelled out and that the year of the charge has been added to the borrowed and due dates. The year of a charge can usually be found by scanning backward on the page to find the most recent receipt of the borrowing subscription fee. For the above example, looking backward from the example entry, the first subscription entry we encounter is

so 1830 is the year that goes with the date the book was borrowed. Sometimes the year is just written in the margin and other times you have to compute the year by counting December-to-January transitions.

3.3) Book Sizes

Enter book sizes in the book size field with the abbreviation given in Appendix B. Do not use superscripts. For example, the book size in the following entry

would be transcribed in the book size field as 8vo

3.4) Volume Numbers

If multiple volumes are borrowed, separate the volume numbers in the transcription using a comma regardless of how they are separated in the register. Do not transcribe text such as vol. that identifies the numbers as being volume numbers.

How to Transcribe

3.5) Periodical Volumes

Volumes of periodicals are from time to time entered into the register by year rather than volume number. In this case enter the year in parentheses in the volume field. For example,

would be transcribed as

Note in passing that both the author and size fields are blank.

4) Author Names

4.1) Author names should be spelled out to the greatest extent consistent with time available. Use on-line resources such as Athena, WorldCat, and the Library of Congress for this purpose.

4.2) Do not include possessive notations added to the end of an author name such as 's in your transcription.

4.3) If there are multiple authors, enter them all in the author field separated by a semi-colon (because same names may include a comma).

5) Book Titles

5.1) As with author name, expand and spell out book titles to the greatest extent consistent with time available. Avail yourself of on-line resources such as Athena, WorldCat, and the Library of Congress for this purpose.

In the fullness of time we will want to make sure that a singular book is represented in all its transcriptions in a common manner but for now just expand the title in the transcription as best you can.

5.2) A book title is transcribed to the title of the book as bestowed by the book's author. For example, if the title includes an abbreviation, then the abbreviation is not expanded.

6) Non-Charge Entries

There are occasionally non-charge entries in the registers. They are almost all the recording a payment. These should be transcribed as they are written without data field separators but with abbreviations expanded. For example, the entry

would be transcribed as

January 20 Received Subscription for 1830 5

Notice in passing that both Jan and Rec'd have been spelled out. How to Transcribe

How to Transcribe

Appendix A. Transcriptions of Special Abbreviations

The periods may or may not appear in the register entry. Trailing letters may or may not be recorded as superscripts.

In the Register In the Transcription Dr. Dr. Esq. Esq. Hon. Hon. Jr. Jr. Jun. Jr. M.D. M.D. Rev. Reverend Rev'd Reverend Rec'd Received Sub. Subscription

Appendix B. Transcriptions of Book Sizes

In the Register In the Transcription fo fo folio fo 4to 4to 4° 4to 8vo 8vo 8° 8vo 12mo 12mo 12° 12mo 16mo 16mo 16° 16mo