Progress update, 14 to 20 June 2014

Welcome along to the progress update for the period 14 to 20 June 2014, which has seen volunteers continue to transcribe at a tremendous rate.

9,328 manuscripts have now been transcribed or partially-transcribed, which is an increase of 164 on this time last week. Of these transcripts, 8,484 (90%) have passed our quality-control process, up 167 since last Friday. The completion rate has dropped a little in the last few weeks, as we continue to work our way through the rather large backlog of transcripts submitted during the last few weeks. We’re getting there and thank volunteers for their patience and bearing with us while we catch up. Many apologies for the delay in getting round to transcripts.

The more detailed state of progress is as follows:

Box	No. of manuscripts worked on	No. of manuscripts in box	Completion
Box 1	105	794	13%
Box 2	465	753	61%
Box 5	163	290	56%
Box 15	45	914	5%
Box 18	2	192	1%
Box 27	350	350	100%
Box 29	7	122	5%
Box 31	10	302	3%
Box 34	23	398	5%
Box 35	286	439	65%
Box 36	20	418	4%
Box 37	14	487	2%
Box 38	42	424	9%
Box 39	5	282	1%
Box 41	77	528	13%
Box 42	67	910	7%
Box 44	50	201	24%
Box 50	159	198	79%
Box 51	372	940	39%
Box 57	11	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	111	296	37%
Box 98	218	499	43%
Box 100	183	422	41%
Box 107	498	538	89%
Box 115	276	307	89%
Box 116	498	864	57%
Box 117	312	853	36%
Box 118	181	880	20%
Box 119	283	990	28%
Box 121	125	526	22%
Box 122	286	717	39%
Box 139	40	40	100%
Box 150	118	972	12%
Box 169	161	728	22%
Add MSS 537	532	744	71%
Add MSS 538	249	858	29%
Add MSS 539	371	948	39%
Overall	9,328	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). Dr Quinn (and the rest of us!) would be particularly grateful if volunteers chose to direct some attention towards manuscripts from these boxes.

As we mentioned last week, on 1 July the TB editorial team will be holding a focus group at UCL to discuss the application of handwritten text recognition technology to Bentham’s manuscripts, as part of our work on the tranScriptorium project. 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.

Thank you, as always, to everyone who has so generously given their time to Transcribe Bentham during the last week. It is as greatly appreciated as ever.

 

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.