Progress update, 24 to 30 August 2013
By Kris Grint, on 30 August 2013
Welcome to the progress update for the period 24 to 30 August 2013, which marks the end of an exciting week for Transcribe Bentham. Progress made by our volunteer transcribers remains very high: 8,539 words of Bentham text have been transcribed during the last week, as well as 3,657 words of TEI XML.
6,013 manuscripts have now been transcribed or partially-transcribed, which is an increase of 38 on last week’s total. Of these transcripts, 5,721 have met the required quality-controls and are complete, which is up 34 on this time last week. Breaking through the 6,000 manuscript barrier is a significant milestone for Transcribe Bentham, and we are also on course to soon reach 3 million transcribed words: an incredible feat that would simply not be possible without the help of our volunteer transcribers.
The more detailed state of progress is as follows:
- Box 2: 461 manuscripts transcribed of 753 (61%)
- Box 27: 350 of 350 (100%)
- Box 35: 283 of 439 (64%)
- Box 41: 52 of 528 (9%)
- Box 42: 40 of 910 (4%)
- Box 50: 142 of 198 (71%)
- Box 51: 361 of 940 (38%)
- Box 62: 53 of 565 (9%)
- Box 70: 293 of 350 (83%)
- Box 71: 663 of 663 (100%)
- Box 72: 611 of 664 (92%)
- Box 73: 151 of 151 (100%)
- Box 79: 199 of 199 (100%)
- Box 95: 120 of 147 (81%)
- Box 96: 528 of 539 (97%)
- Box 97: 66 of 296 (22%)
- Box 98: 214 of 499 (42%)
- Box 100: 176 of 422 (39%)
- Box 107: 425 of 538 (79%)
- Box 115: 276 of 307 (89%)
- Box 116: 469 of 864 (54%)
- Box 121: 42 of 526 (8%)
- Box 139: 38 of 38 (100%)
- Overall: 54% of the 11,014 manuscripts currently uploaded to the website have been transcribed.
Significant progress this week was made by volunteers on box 121, which reveals a wealth of content relating to Bentham’s anger at the failure of his Panopticon prison scheme. Bentham’s dealings with government institutions – including descriptions of him accosting the likes of Charles Long, junior secretary to the Treasury – can be explored in fine detail within this set of manuscripts.
Finally, members of Transcribe Bentham were featured on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme this week, and also in a video on the BBC News website. Renowned chef Fergus Henderson of the St. John Restaurant in Smithfield cooked up one of Bentham’s recipes from the Panopticon papers in box 107 whilst Tim Causer, Melissa Terras and Michael Quinn of UCL discussed the life, legacy and manuscripts of Jeremy Bentham. The recipe in question – a Devonshire pie containing tripe, spleen, lungs and gooseberries – was surprisingly tasty, and even good enough to be considered for inclusion on the St. John dinner menu! Listen to an audio recording of the Bentham feature.