Progress update, 29 September to 5 October 2012

Welcome to the progress update for the period 29 September 2012 to 5 October 2012, during which time further steady progress has been made.

4,455 manuscripts have now been transcribed or partially-transcribed, which is an increase of 43 on last week’s total. Of these, 4,224 (94%) are now complete and locked, which is 39 more than this time last week.

The more detailed state of progress is as follows:

• Box 2: 343 manuscripts transcribed of 532 (64%)
• Box 27: 348 of 350 (99%)
• Box 35: 269 of 439 (61%)
• Box 50: 63 of 92 (68%)
• Box 51: 311 of 940 (33%)
• Box 62: 53 of 565 (9%)
• Box 70: 172 of 250 (49%)
• Box 71: 651 of 665 (97%)
• Box 72: 606 of 664 (91%)
• Box 73: 151 of 151 (100%)
• Box 79: 198 of 199 (99%)
• Box 95: 87 of 147 (59%)
• Box 96: 526 of 539 (97%)
• Box 97: 33 of 288 (11%)
• Box 98: 12 of 499 (2%)
• Box 100: 99 of 433 (21%)
• Box 115: 265 of 307 (86%)
• Box 116: 265 of 864 (26%)
• Box 139: 38 of 38 (100%)
• Overall: 55% of the 8,068 manuscripts uploaded to the website have been transcribed thus far.

Box 51 was again the most heavily-transcribed during the past seven days. Box 79 is now all but complete: only JB/079/047/001 remains to be transcribed but, alas, even by Bentham’s standards, it’s an absolute stinker.

As noted in a blog entry earlier this week, as part of the programme funded by our new grant, we are asking volunteers to suggest ways in which they would like to see the Transcription Desk modified in order to make volunteering with the project more straightforward. We have already received a number of extremely helpful comments and ideas from transcribers, and would be delighted to hear from anyone else who might have any suggestions.

This week, we were also delighted to welcome back Anna-Maria Sichani to Transcribe Bentham, who was here on a work placement earlier in the year. Anna-Maria will, amongst other things, help us in converting the Bentham Project’s vast back catalogue of ‘Legacy Transcripts’ from Microsoft Word into TEI XML. This process was started under our original AHRC grant in 2010, but has been in abeyance until now.

We will also soon be updating the project team page with details of all those who will be working on the new programme. Watch this space, as they say.

Thank you, as ever, to all those volunteers who have so generously given their time and effort in participating in Transcribe Bentham during the last week. It remains greatly appreciated.