Crowdsourced transcription often means that there will be more than one person transcribing a document. Check out the video below to get an idea of how to continue transcribing a document that has been partly transcribed by somebody else:
The "Start Transcribing" button has a "sophisticated" algorithm behind it. It goes something like this:
1) Take the transcriber to the first page in the next untranscribed work.
2) If there aren't any works that are entirely untranscribed, take them to the next available page on the least-recently-worked-on work.
Q: With the side-by-side view, is there a trick to making the rows easier to input content into? Is there a way to increase the depth of the table so that the first few rows are visible?
A: In your table configuration, make sure you set the default number of rows (generally to match your material). You need to set a number of rows to display in the spreadsheet configuration. (Step 8 here: https://content.fromthepage.com/spreadsheet-configuration/)
Q: Is there a setting where for this project the first image of the uploaded work can be the featured image?
A: For the featured image, we grab one at random, but you can set the featured image by clicking on the title of the work, then “pages”, then finding the page you want and clicking “make featured image”.
Q: There are at least two of us who need to log in to manage the projects. Should we make a general login and share the credentials or is there a way to add another user?
A: Have your staff create their own accounts and add them to your first collection as owners (right side of the settings tab). They’ll be able to manage that collection and it marks them as staff for your account, so they’ll be able to create new collections. They’ll receive the nightly status emails. The only thing they won’t be able to do is delete collections.
Q: How do I download the transcribed data from the tables? When I try to download, I only get metadata about transcriptions.
A: If you go to the “export all” (top choice on the export tab) you will have an option to download all the table data for the collection as a zip.
Q: How do we integrate OCR with From the Page?
A: There are a couple of answers to that depending on where your OCR is now. If you're using CONTENTdm, you can just check the checkbox to pull it in when you import material. If you're uploading PDFs with a text layer, you can just check the checkbox to pull it in when you import material. If you're uploading zip files of images, you can create text files or TEI-xml files that match the image files' names. More information here:
https://content.fromthepage.com/project-owner-documentation/uploading-existing-transcriptions/ If you have IIIF manifests with your transcription as web annotations, we're working with the State Library of New South Wales to build an ingestion path, but it's not ready yet.
Q: We're not sure of the volume of transcription at this stage. Is it possible to start on the researcher plan, and shift up a plan if we require more pages to be transcribed?
A: Absolutely. The key difference, other than page count, is that under the researcher plan you can only have a single collection. "Collection", in FromThePage, is the level that controls the configuration for the project. So if you want to do full text transcription of letters or diaries AND a spreadsheet indexing project of government records those would need to be two separate collections.
Q: Is it possible to set up an institutional account/collections rather than it being under my user name?
A: Yes. You can change the email and display name associated with your account by clicking on the "Sign in as..." in the top right, then "Your Profile", and "edit profile". To change the email you choose "login & password". Alternatively, if you have a service-style email you could create another account with that and we could move your collections to it.
Q: Is there a way to download the transcription line by line as it appears on the transcription screen? It would be helpful to have the transcription download with original line breaks.
A: You’ll find the type of export you want in the “export all works” (button on the top of the export screen); there’s a “verbatim plaintext” option that preserves the line breaks and hyphens.
Q: Is there a way to prevent two people from working on the same document at the same time?
A: If two people are working on the same page at the same time, the last person who saves will overwrite the previous one. We attempt to avoid this by showing the 2nd transcriber a warning, "this page is being edited by another user!". If they do happen to overwrite, you'll be able to see both versions in the "versions" tab.
Q: Is there any easy way to add special characters on each transcription page? We might need to be creative, but most laptops and computers have different ways of allowing a user to make the symbol, so it's a bit complicated to explain to each transcriber how to do it.
A: What some of our other projects that use less common characters do is include those characters in the transcription conventions under the page and tell folks they can copy and paste from there.
Q: Is it possible to modify the size of the transcription box in relation to the image box?
A: There are a couple of ways to improve this. At the top left of the image are two options: fullscreen and where the image is aligned. We would recommend they experiment with those settings -- both full screen and "image at the top" gives you the following:
Q: How do you remove a value from one of the drop-down fields? What will happen if I remove an option that has been selected? Will those cells then be blank? The goal is to leave them blank rather than mark them Unknown.
A: The existing data will stay "unknown", so you'll still have "unknown" in your exports. If any of the already indexed pages are saved again, "unknowns" would become blanks.
Q: If I move a column, will all the data already entered into it move with it? Or will that shift throw off the alignment?
A: Reordering columns should have no effect; the only issue is when you relabel them.
Q: How do I delete my account?
A: If you sign in and go to "Your Profile/Username and password" there's an option to delete your account at the bottom.
Q: Can I earn community service hours for transcribing on FromThePage?
A: Check out which organizations offer service hours here.
Q: I am transcribing a document that is presented as mirrored. Is there a way to flip it for easier transcription?
A: Click on the image and press the F key. That should mirror the image.
Q: How do I add my ORCID ID to my FromThePage account?
A: Read this post for the steps.