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Week 3: More Transcriptions and Inter Annotator Agreement

This week I doubled my workload of transcriptions and find myself getting better at the puzzle. When I transcribe a letter the most important part is to follow the transcription guide created by PRINT. This guide is key to understanding how to transcribe a letter. After I finish my current round of transcription I will be nearing my benchmark of 10 letters transcribe (as noted in my syllabus). From there I will begin transcribing in Zooniverse which is a platform that collaborates between PRINT employees and volunteers.

I also continued to learn another set of protocols this week with the HSP EndNote. This database holds the Pemberton papers which is the first set of documents worked on in the PRINT project. During the first weeks of my internship I will be working on transferring data from EndNote to an excel sheet that reflects PRINT's updated protocols. Essentially I am dissecting letters in the Pemberton papers for information pertinent to the project. This process relies off subjectivity as I will need to document mentions, relationships, and alt names. The most challenging part of this process is figuring out what parts of letters is worth mentioning in a database. It is important to have names, locations, and definite events. I met with Brook Miller and we discussed a concept called the inter annotator agreement. The inter annotator agreement is a process in which a set of protocols is created, tested through various annotators, and judged for accuracy. A part of my role this summer will be using this concept and testing it on PRINT's databases to compare and judge annotators for accuracy. Next week, I will meet with Brook again to discuss literature on inter annotator agreement and continue to transcribe and cleanup EndNote. 

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