Progress update, 7 June to 13 June 2014: Record-breaking week for Transcribe Bentham

It is my pleasure to announce that this week on Transcribe Bentham has seen the breaking of three records.

The first to report is that 9,164 manuscripts have now been transcribed or partially-transcribed since the project began. This is an outstanding achievement by our volunteers, not least because on 25 April 2014 the total surpassed 8,000, meaning over 1,000 transcripts have been added in just 7 weeks – the quickest ever.

Secondly, this week also saw the record for number of manuscripts transcribed smashed, with exactly 300 transcribed or partially-transcribed, eclipsing the previous record by 88.

Last but not least, our 2014 transcription rate, which is the average number of manuscripts transcribed per week, has topped 100 for the first time.

A hearty congratulations to all our transcribers who continue to amaze us with both the quantity and quality of their work.

Of the total 9,164 manuscripts that have now been transcribed or partially transcribed, 8,287 (90%) have been checked and approved by TB editorial staff. We are still working through a significant backlog of submitted transcripts which should be resolved by next week’s update.

The more detailed state of progress is as follows:

Box	No. of manuscripts worked on	No. of manuscripts in box	Completion
Box 1	103	794	12%
Box 2	465	753	61%
Box 5	163	290	56%
Box 15	43	914	5%
Box 18	2	192	1%
Box 27	350	350	100%
Box 29	5	122	4%
Box 31	9	302	2%
Box 34	23	398	5%
Box 35	286	439	65%
Box 36	19	418	4%
Box 37	14	487	2%
Box 38	42	424	9%
Box 39	5	282	1%
Box 41	76	528	13%
Box 42	67	910	7%
Box 44	50	201	24%
Box 50	159	198	79%
Box 51	372	940	39%
Box 57	9	420	2%
Box 62	55	565	10%
Box 70	295	350	84%
Box 71	663	663	100%
Box 72	612	664	92%
Box 73	151	151	100%
Box 79	199	199	100%
Box 95	123	147	83%
Box 96	534	539	99%
Box 97	85	296	28%
Box 98	218	499	43%
Box 100	183	422	41%
Box 107	476	538	88%
Box 115	276	307	89%
Box 116	498	864	57%
Box 117	304	853	35%
Box 118	167	880	18%
Box 119	255	990	22%
Box 121	125	526	22%
Box 122	286	717	39%
Box 139	40	40	100%
Box 150	114	972	11%
Box 169	161	728	22%
Add MSS 537	498	744	66%
Add MSS 538	230	858	36%
Add MSS 539	354	948	37%
Overall	9,164	23,881	38%

 
Dr Michael Quinn, Senior Research Associate at the Bentham Project, is preparing the authoritative edition of Bentham’s economic writings for publication in the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Dr Quinn is currently working on manuscripts in boxes 1, 2 and 150. Boxes 1 and 2 contain Bentham’s ideas on political economy, whilst Box 150 focuses on preventive police (more specifically the Thames Police Bill, which Bentham drew up in conjunction with the magistrate, Patrick Colquhoun). Assistance from TB volunteers in completing the transcription of these three boxes would be gratefully received. Full acknowledgement in the resulting published volume will be given to the transcribers of manuscripts used.

Finally, on 1 July 2014, the TB editorial team will be running a focus-group at UCL discussing the application of handwritten text recognition technology to Bentham’s manuscripts. Any interested parties are warmly invited to attend, and lunch will be provided. For more details, please see this link or email k.grint@ucl.ac.uk.