I've downloaded and played around with FamilySearch Indexer, and I must report that it's really impressive. Initially I was dismayed by the idea of collaborative transcription on a thick (desktop!) client, but my trial run showed me why it's necessary for their problem domain. Simply put, FSI is designed for forms, not freeform manuscripts like letters. The problem … [Read more...] about FamilySearch Indexer Review
similar projects
FamilySearch Indexing
Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter enthuses over the news that FamilySearch.com, the website of the Utah Genealogy Society of which Dan Lawyer is PM is putting public archives online. This service is provided through FamilySearch Indexing, which is a sort of clearinghouse for records transcribed by human volunteers. FamilySearchIndexer is not quite true image-based … [Read more...] about FamilySearch Indexing
Gavin Robinson's Project Wenham
On his indispensable Investigations of a Dog, Gavin Robinson describes digitizing his grandfather's letters from a German POW camp in WWI: The text will be transcribed and marked up with TEI compliant XML, and published on the web, along with background information written by me. There will be an index of people, and possibly places. Another optional extra will be selections of … [Read more...] about Gavin Robinson's Project Wenham
Susan Kitchens' Letter Project
Susan Kitchens at Family Oral History Using Digital Tools [and I thought "Collaborative Manuscript Transcription" was a mouthful!] has a need that's very similar to my own. She's got a bunch of old letters and she wants to "scan them all and somehow make sense of them digitally". Her post on the subject outlines a plan to embed metadata into the scanned images themselves. … [Read more...] about Susan Kitchens' Letter Project