Update to Follow

Now that the initial transcriptions are complete the various pieces of the project can start to move forward.  The week on November 30th our class will be discussing the progress people have made on their specific pieces of the project (a similar update will occur the week of February 1st).  Following this I shall update the blog with what people are working on and how aspects of the project are looking as we move into the winter.  In the long run however it looks as though we are aiming for a website launch around the 24th of March, 2011.

In other news the Chatham/Christ Church project is beginning to pick up.  A link to their blog shall be posted in the near future as well.

Transcription

The initial transcription process, though daunting at times, is remarkably rewarding.  Being able to allow others access to a primary source that was previously restricted to hands on use is one of the true callings of historians.  Through transcription, however, the historian is able to influence how the process occurs.  Punctuation, phrasing, illegible and missing words are unintentionally manipulated by the transcriber when attempting to put the document back together.  This is unavoidable unfortunately.  In order to delineate the original from the transcriber’s input we put changes in square brackets ([example]) so readers are able to pass judgment themselves as a photograph of the original will be included with our transcriptions.  No source can ever truly be pristine.

After the initial transcription process we face the issue of where and how to proceed.  As this is a class project it may be difficult to come up with any single solution to this but through individual portions of the project a large number of historical types may be wedded together to form the whole.  For myself social aspects of history are the key to understanding history in general as different areas (like politics and economy) can be understood and learned about through a social perspective as well as their own sub-fields of history—while, at least in my opinion, social history may be slightly more difficult to get at the other way around.  Despite this a holistic approach is usually the best option.  If a historian approaches a project hoping to find a specific element they most often will dig or interpret until they have found it, the same is true of the reverse.  By being open minded and not setting oneself up for particular interpretations a wider range of information becomes available.  

By having so many different individuals, mindsets, and perspectives working on a single project our class has the benefit of ‘forced holism’.  People innately interpret things based on their own paradigm and personal interest; as such the combination of people in the class will allow multiple sides to be seen.  The problem of wedding interpretations and gleaned information together is likely to arise but that is just another proverbial bridge the class, and any historian doing research, needs to cross and square off with.