RunCoCo

Transcribe Bentham is inviting participants to what they call “the first major crowdsourcing transcription project”.

The Transcribe Bentham Project, based at University College London, has produced digital images of a large selection of  original and unstudied manuscript papers written by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the great philosopher and reformer. These digital images are now made available through the the project’s Transcription Desk – an interface where the image is displayed with an online text editor.

Interested users can register and the choose a manuscript image to transcribe. The interface offers a range of useful features, for example allowing the transcriber to add metadata to the transcript and magnify and focus on a section of a page. The manuscripts are divided into different categories, which helps the transcriber choose a suitable manuscript to work on. Once a transcription is complete, the user submits it to the project, where it is reviewed by the editors.

Jeremy Bentham's "Auto-Icon" at University College London.

The project is interesting in more than one way. Bentham may be well-known and his ideas studied but a large proportion of his writings has never been published. By making the material available, the Transcribe Bentham project is creating a marvellous opportunity for researchers, students and other interested parties to get to know Jeremy Bentham and his ideas better.

I recognise, as the all-comprehensive, and only right and proper end of Government the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the members of the community
Bentham (1983 [1822-32]) p.136 [Const Code Ch.VII,§2]

The project also has a lot to offer those involved in or interested in other areas, not least digital computing and community collection of different kinds. It will be interesting to follow the progress of the project and learn from their work.

We would like to encourage all those who have an interest in Bentham or those with an interest in  history, politics, law, philosophy and economics, fields to which Bentham made significant contributions, to visit the site. Those with an enthusiasm for palaeography, transcription and manuscript studies will be interested in Bentham’s handwriting, while those involved in digital humanities, education and heritage learning will find the site intriguing. (Transcribing Bentham website)

More information:

For more information about the project and the Transcription desk, please go to the Transcribe Bentham Project website where you can also learn more about the (non-digital) Bentham collection.

The project has its own Facebook page and you can follow it on Twitter (#transctbentham). It has also been written about elsewhere, such as in  ‘Growing Knowledge‘ (British Library blog) and Times Higher Education. No doubt more will follow.

Image credit: photo taken by Michael Reeve, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0.

Recently Museums Galleries Scotland launched the website Remembering Scotland at War, the result of a three-year collaboration with museums and galleries across Scotland funded by the Big Lottery Fund. Most interesting from the perspective of the RunCoCo project is the community area of this large online museum, where you can upload your own story or photos and see what others have shared.

Community page from Remembering Scotland at War

I struggle with the two ‘Community’ sections of the Remembering Scotland at War website, one linked from the ever-present top-navigation bar, and the other linked from other parts of the site including the home page. However I guess if I was to become actively involved the distinction between them would become evident.

The website look-and-feel and crowdsourcing functionality are very similar to The People’s Collection Wales launched last month, and the more established digital storytelling sites Digitalt fortalt (Norway) and Platsr (Sweden).

If interest takes off Remembering Scotland at War will be able to do what our pilot project The Great War Archive only dreamed of. Community archives about the World Wars include Oxford’s The Great War Archive, the BBC’s WW2 The People’s War, the more recent From Warfare to Welfare 1939-1959 from the National Library of Wales and the Welsh Voices of the Great War Online currently collecting (blog post for further information) from their base at the University of Cardiff. But these have not made great play of the user-generated content side of their activity – beyond, of course, the publicly digitised and contributed content. What I mean is, the community side of Remembering Scotland at War emphasises the sharing of content and knowledge by the ‘community’, e.g. giving contributors the ability to comment on material, to rate it, to gather it together in their own ‘scrapbooks’ or collections – not organised by the constraints of the formal metadata.

The Great War Archive was indebted to contributors who attended our public roadshow at Edinburgh Library on 4 June 2008 but also to the many who submitted to the Archive from across Scotland, especially the community on the Orkneys. For example, these are just a couple of the photos submitted The Great War Archive that relate to Captain Thomas N. F. Hourston, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, (images © The Great War Archive, University of Oxford / Ian M Hourston):

Kilt worn by Thomas N. F. Hourston

Thomas N. F. Hourston in uniform