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Week 2: Transcription Practice & Protocols

In my second week of my internship at PRINT I started to become familiarized with my role. Each week I participate in Tuesday team meetings and transcription Friday. After Tuesday's meeting I had a one-on-one with Dr. Beiler and we discussed the syllabus and the type of the work I will be engaging in throughout the summer. Dr. Belier and Dr. Miller asked if I would like to work on quality assurance in the databases which I happily agreed. For this task I will need to read secondary literature on a concept called inter annotator agreement. Essentially I will be examining the metadata throughout PRINT's database beginning with the Pemberton papers and make sure annotators are being consistent. In order to do so I will need to familiarize myself with PRINT protocols for metadata as well as EndNote which I began this week. EndNote is PRINT's database for their papers. In addition to my work on metadata, I am practicing how to transcribe letters in STARS database. This week I transcribed two letters from Mary Pike and Richard Johns. Shown below are images of what the letters looked like.




As you can see both letters are different in handwriting. While Richard Johns letter is an easier read, Mary Pike's gave me more questions than answers. For both letters I partnered up with another intern who is new to the project to compare transcriptions. Transcribing letters is like deciphering a puzzle. Sometimes it can be frustrating and other times quite fun. A tip I have learned while transcribing is cross referencing letters with previous words. Nothing is more thrilling than going over a sentence and figuring out a word that ten minutes ago just looked like scratches on a page. Transcription Friday meetings also help with my practice. This meeting is a collaborative environment with other people in the project and encourages us to work together to transcribe a letter. It's also interesting to find language that is still used today. For example, in Richard Johns letter to Israel Pemberton he uses the metaphor "for I see out of sight out of mind." Completing both letters allowed me to practice my transcribing skills which I will continue to develop throughout the semester. Next week I will continue to transcribe as well as familiarize myself with protocols and EndNote.

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