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Project update – latest on our transcription challenge

By uczwlse, on 11 October 2018

It’s time for a second update on the transcription challenge we launched in back in July.

It has been really cheering to see so many of our volunteers responding to our request to complete the transcription of a number of targeted boxes.  Thanks to this collaborative work, we are coming close to finalising the transcription of 7 boxes of Bentham’s manuscripts.  I am hugely grateful to everyone who has participated.

Volunteers have now transcribed 104 pages of the targeted material.  This represents around 75% of the 138 pages which we asked them to transcribe.

This is a particularly impressive achievement when you consider that it is often the most difficult pages which remain untranscribed at the Transcription Desk.   Many of these pages have terrible handwriting, confusing layouts and passages of non-English text.

Volunteers have reached our target for boxes 14, 95 and 538 – yay!  And there are just 1-2 pages still to transcribe in boxes 50, 70 and 537.  Box 72 has a number of pages still to be transcribed – and we would be grateful for the help of any French-speaking volunteers.

The full list of outstanding pages can be found at the end of this blog post – we invite all our volunteers to keep transcribing!

 

Box Number
No. of pages transcribed
Target no. of pages to transcribe
Target achieved?
14 3 3 Yes
50 15 16 Nearly
70 34 35 Nearly
72 15 45 No
95 19 19  Yes
537 4 6  Nearly
538 14 14 Yes
TOTAL 104 138

 

All the transcription statistics on Transcribe Bentham are compiled manually.  So once all the targets have been reached, I will need to undertake some double-checks to ensure that each of these boxes is complete.  Then we will be able to celebrate the completion of 7 boxes of Bentham’s manuscripts and another fantastic contribution to Bentham scholarship!

If you have any questions or comments about the challenge, please let me know by email (transcribe.bentham@ucl.ac.uk).  Happy transcribing…

Material still to transcribe:

Box 50

Page Number
Content Difficulty of handwriting Foreign language?
 JB/050/174/001  Legal procedure (table form)  Difficult  French

Box 70

Page Number
Content Difficulty of handwriting
Foreign language?
 JB/070/261/001  Larceny Difficult

Box 72

Page Number
Content Difficulty of handwriting
Foreign language?
 JB/072/010/001  Offences against revenue (table form)  Moderate
 JB/072/010/002   Offences against revenue (table form)  Moderate
 JB/072/011/001  Offences against trade (table form)  Moderate
 JB/072/014/001  Offences against public property (short table form)   Moderate
 JB/072/016/001  Offences against government (table form)   Moderate
 JB/072/016/002  Offences against government (table form)   Moderate
 JB/072/018/001  Offences against national peace (short table form)   Moderate
 JB/072/019/001  Offences against the coin (table form)   Moderate
 JB/072/183/002  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/183/003  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/183/004  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/184/001  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/186/001  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/215/001  Penal code (table form)  Difficult  French
 JB/072/216/001  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/216/002  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/216/003  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/216/004  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/217/001  Penal code  Difficult  French
 JB/072/219/001  Penal code  Moderate  French
 JB/072/219/002  Penal code  Moderate  French
 JB/072/220/001  Penal code  Moderate  French
 JB/072/220/002  Penal code  Moderate  French
 JB/072/220/003  Penal code   Moderate  French
 JB/072/220/004  Penal code   Moderate  French
 JB/072/221/001  Penal code   Moderate  French
 JB/072/221/002  Penal code   Moderate  French
 JB/072/221/003  Penal code   Moderate  French
 JB/072/221/004  Penal code   Moderate  French
 JB/072/222/001  Penal code   Moderate  French

Box 537

Page Number
Content Difficulty of handwriting
Foreign language?
 JB/537/364/001  Jeremy to Samuel Bentham  Difficult  French
JB/537/365/001  Jeremy to Samuel Bentham  Difficult  French

 

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