Melissa Terras: Transcribe Bentham: Sharing Labour, Sharing Platforms, Sharing Data

Transcript

1. Transcribe Bentham: Sharing Labour, Sharing Platforms, Sharing Data Professor Melissa Terras Professor of Digital Humanities, UCL Dept of Information Studies Director, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities m.terras@ucl.ac.uk
3. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) •Jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer •Leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law •Influenced the development of welfarism •Advocated utilitarianism •Animal rights, •Work on the “panopticon” •Not founder of UCL, but... •60,000 folios in UCL Sp. Collections •40,000 untranscribed •Auto-icon
5. The Bentham Project • http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/ • Since 1959 • “aims to produce a new scholarly edition of the works and correspondence of Jeremy Bentham” • twenty six volumes of the new Collected Works have been published • 50 years to transcribe 20,000 folios • Previous AHRC grant catalogued the manuscripts – http://www.benthampapers.ucl.ac.uk/
7. First 80 hours, June 2009: 20,000 volunteers, 170,000 pages read. Late 2013: 28,824 volunteers, 224,577 pages read. 234,255 to go
8. Teamwork! • Professor Philip Schofield, Director, UCL Bentham Project • Dr Melissa Terras, Reader, UCL Digital Humanities • Dr Justin Tonra, Research Associate, UCL Bentham Project • Dr Tim Causer, Research Associate, UCL Bentham Project • Dr Valerie Wallace, Research Associate, UCL Bentham Project • Mr Richard M. Davis, Development Manager, ULCC Digital Archives • Mr Martin Moyle, Digital Curation Manager, UCL Library Services • Mr Tony Slade, Acting Manager – UCL Design, Photography and Web Services • And the whole Transcriptorium team!
19. Facts and Figures (as of 19th Sept 2014) • 10,853 manuscripts transcribed/partially transcribed • 9,883 (91%) checked and accepted • 60,074 visits • 24,127 unique visitors • 863,201 page views • Average session time: 12 mins 50 seconds • 131 countries
20. More facts and figures (Sept 2014) • 440 people have transcribed something (as of 19 September) • Most of the work has been done by a core of 25 'Super Transcribers’ • Average of 51 transcripts per week since the start of the project • Average of 107 per week since the start of 2014 • Average of 133 per week since the end of March 2014, when the BL manuscripts were first made available • Biggest number of transcripts in any one week: 300 (week commencing 14 June 2014)
21. Username Began participating Still participating? Location No. of manuscripts worked on Average MSS worked on per week Carno 28 Dec 2010 No Unknown 89 7 Clarabloomer 30 Dec 2010 No US 71 8 Diane Folan 22 Sept 2010 Yes UK 1,198 8 Lea Stern 4 Jan 2011 Yes US 1,314 8 Lidunn 28 Dec 2010 No US 75 2 Mfoutz 29 Dec 2010 Yes US 133 1 RexL 31 Dec 2010 Yes US 142 1 Jancopes 4 July 2011 Yes US 375 3 Duyfken 1 Aug 2011 No Australia 38 38 Jillybean 15 Aug 2011 No UK 106 4 Calico-pie 11 Sept 2011 No France 37 3 Ohsoldgirl 11 Sept 2011 Yes UK 1,176 10 Jfoxe 20 Sept 2011 No UK 1,450 13 OlganNM 9 Oct 2011 No UK 69 1 Petergh 11 Nov 2011 Yes UK 972 7 Keithompson 21 Jan 2013 Yes UK 284 4 Robmagin 29 May 2013 Yes Canada 102 2 Laura Terry 13 July 2013 No UK 37 1 S.D. Croft 5 Jan 2014 Yes UK 336 12 David 16 Feb 2014 No US 68 10 TCMemoire 13 March 2014 Yes US 275 14 Trascribiris 2 April 2014 Yes Netherlands 99 6 Diane Jonker 2 April 2014 Yes Netherlands 272 16 Chris Riley 12 May 2014 Yes UK 1,025 93 Hanatori71 5 June 2014 Yes Spain 46 6 ‘Super Transcriber’ contributions, 8 September 2010 to 1 August 2014
22. Quality-control measurements (1 October 2012 to 27 June 2014) • 4,413 transcripts approved and locked • * submitted by 79 individuals • 1.2 million words (268 per transcript) excluding TEI • 1.6m words (366 per transcript) including TEI • 247 hours and 42 minutes (33 working days) spent checking submissions • Average of 201 seconds to check a transcript (with wide variation depending on complexity of manuscript, experience of transcriber, accuracy of mark-up etc) • Using the first iteration of the Transcription Desk, approved transcripts required an average of 4 alterations to the text, and 8 to the mark-up; using the improved version, this was reduced to 2 to the text and 3 to the mark-up
24. Transcribe Bentham progress, 8 September 2010 to 19 September 2014
25. Volunteer motivations
26. What dissuaded people from taking part?
28. The future of TB • Between 1984 and 2010, Bentham Project staff produced ca. 28,000 transcripts, owing to the availability (or otherwise) of funding for editorial work. Assuming that funding would remain available continuously for transcription to continue at this rate, and had TB never existed, the remainder of the Bentham Papers would not be fully transcribed until 2081. • Since TB launched on 8 September 2010, and up to 19 Sept 2014, volunteers have worked on 2,562 transcripts per year (51 per week). At this pace, the remainder of the Bentham Papers could be completely transcribed within 27 years. • But if volunteers keep going at the same pace as they have since the start of 2014 (and more particularly the end of March), then we could have the entire collection transcribed within a decade.
29. Lets talk about cash… £262,673 from AHRC, for a one year project Two Full time Research Associates could have transcribed c.5,000 manuscripts between them over twelve months (10 per day). This would have cost around £100,000.
32. • An EC FP7-funded project, in the ICT for Learning and Access to Cultural Resources challenge • Project consortium • Universitat Politècnica de València – UPV (Spain) – lead institution • Universiy of Innsbruck (Austria) • National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos” (Greece) • University College London (UK) • Institute for Dutch Lexicology (Netherlands) • University London Computer Centre (UK) • www.transcriptorium.eu (more information, and demonstrations of the HTR software) • @transcriptorium
33. Dare I do a live demo????? • http://transcriptorium.eu/demots/test.php
43. With thanks to: •Prof Philip Schofield (UCL Bentham Project, Principal Investigator) •Dr Tim Causer (Bentham Project) •Dr Kris Grint (Bentham Project) •Richard Davis (University of London Computer Centre •José Martin (ULCC) •Martin Moyle (UCL Library Services) •Lesley Pitman (UCL Library Services) •Tony Slade (UCL Creative Media) •Miguel Faleiro Rodrigues, Alejandro Salinas Lopez, and Raheel Nabi (UCL Creative Media) •Dr Arnold Hunt (British Library) •Anna-Maria Sichani (Bentham Project) •Dr Justin Tonra (National University of Ireland Galway) and Dr Valerie Wallace (Victoria University Wellington), bother formerly of the Bentham Project •And Transcribe Bentham’s volunteers! •Project currently funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation