Progress update, 15 to 21 June 2013

Welcome! After a very busy week here at UCL (of which more below), I am delighted to bring you the Transcribe Bentham progress update for the period 15 to 21 June. 10,751 words of Bentham text have been transcribed this week, along with 5,616 words of TEI XML. The TB conversion rate has remained at a very healthy 95% – this means of all transcripts worked on by volunteers, nearly all have met the required standards and have been locked.

5,710 manuscripts have now been transcribed or partially transcribed, which is an increase of 34 on last week’s total.

The more detailed state of progress is as follows:

• Box 2: 429 manuscripts transcribed of 753 (56%)
• Box 27: 350 of 350 (100%)
• Box 35: 282 of 439 (64%)
• Box 41: 21 of 528 (3%)
• Box 50: 136 of 198 (68%)
• Box 51: 359 of 940 (38%)
• Box 62: 53 of 565 (9%)
• Box 70: 286 of 350 (81%)
• Box 71: 663 of 663 (100%)
• Box 72: 609 of 664 (91%)
• Box 73: 151 of 151 (100%)
• Box 79: 198 of 199 (99%)
• Box 95: 120 of 147 (81%)
• Box 96: 527 of 539 (97%)
• Box 97: 58 of 296 (19%)
• Box 98: 214 of 499 (42%)
• Box 100: 150 of 422 (33%)
• Box 107: 373 of 538 (69%)
• Box 115: 276 of 307 (89%)
• Box 116: 417 of 864 (48%)
• Box 139: 38 of 38 (100%)
• Overall: 60% of the 9,497 manuscripts currently uploaded to the website have been transcribed thus far.

This week the Bentham Project at UCL along with our colleagues at the Centre for Digital Humanities and the University of London Computing Centre hosted a meeting of tranScriptorium partners at Bentham House. This exciting project – funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme – aims to develop innovative handwritten text recognition (HTR) technology to help in the transcription of historical manuscripts. We were fascinated to see some of the preliminary test results on Bentham manuscripts, and are looking forward to future progress in this area.

We are also delighted to announce that, as of Monday 24 June, the brand new version of our Transcription Desk software will enter into beta testing, with an intended public launch date in mid-July. The updated software contains many improvements both behind-the-scenes and in the user interface. We will be contacting volunteer transcribers over the next few days to invite them to try out the new Transcription Desk. If you would like to register your interest in becoming a beta tester of the new software, please email us at transcribe.bentham@ucl.ac.uk.

Finally, our sincere thanks, as ever, to all those who have given their time and effort in transcribing manuscripts during the last seven days. It remains greatly appreciated by us all.