Week 7: Difficult Transcriptions

This week I was faced with the most difficult letter yet. The letter I transcribed was sent from James Harrison to Roger Longworth via Susannah Milner. It caught me by surprise due to how close the lines were and type of handwriting. Here is what the letter looked like:

As you can infer, it took me a while to get through the letter. I sent in my transcript to Adaeze, who is in charge of transcriptions, and fill it out to the best of my ability. I am hoping that her feedback will clarify some sentences/words that I had difficulty on and so I can improve on the next letter I transcribe from James Harrison.

This week I also did another research quality assurance assignment for the team on mentions. The researchers had a better time identifying mentions and almost all of them were in agreement for their annotations. Here is a look at what this week's assessment letter looked like:

Next week I will be beginning group mentions assessments as it was suggested by researchers a couple weeks ago. A letter will be presented on the whiteboard for researchers to work together in identifying mentions. Their responses will be documented in a Microsoft Form for each mention they identify. It will be exciting to see how well everyone works together and if any agreements/disagreements arise while completing the task. Any questions that arise will also be valuable to my research on quality assurance for the PRINT project.

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Week 1: Introduction

Hello! My name is Marissa Bellenger and I am a graduate student in the history department. This summer marks my second year in the program. My research interests are the Civil Rights Movement, Jim Crow, and the New Jim Crow. This summer I will be capstoning and defending my thesis proposal which is the NAACP Equalization campaign in Florida with a focus on the Florida State Teachers Association and professional member networks. This past year I have been a graduate research and teaching assistant for the history department. I also just finished an internship with the City of Orlando in the records department where I built my metadata, microfilm, and cataloging skills. In addition to working on the P.R.I.N.T project this summer I will be a research assistant for the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Seminole newspaper project. I hope my internship with P.R.I.N.T. will improve my transcription skills as many sources in my own research are cursive handwriting that can be difficult to read. I also have a...

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 s...

Week 5: Research QA and Support

This week I started my research for PRINT quality assurance plan. I designed a Microsoft Form for the PRINT team to fill out during our weekly meeting. Quality assurance comes with trial and error and this week I faced my first error. The image below is what the form looked like: The researchers had issues completing the form due to the briefness of the except. They asked that I use a more detailed excerpt instead. So, this week with the help of Casey, I created a new form for them to complete for next weeks meeting. Here is what the new form looks like: As you can see there is more mentions to pull from this letter. It will be interesting to see what the researchers will notice, as they are only allowed to document one mention. I will be saving each answers from the forms and reviewing them with the researchers the following week. I also will be developing metrics as I progress in my internship. These Microsoft Forms will be important in finding agreements and disagreements among rese...

P.R.I.N.T Summer Internship

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