Scanning documents is great and an excellent way to preserve them. But transcribing serves a purpose too. It forces you to actually READ the document. That is a great way to notice phrases or words that sometimes get overlooked. And there are times when that one word or phrase can make all the difference. Transcribe something today.
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7 Responses
I hope to do some this next week.
I do this quite often and have found it to be extremely helpful. Recently I found the probate file of a Hamer ancestor online. It was only because I was transcribing each document that I realized the file contained documents pertaining to two different people – one named Hamer and one named Horner who died in the same place but four years apart and had the same first name.
Transcibing is not just copying. Transcribing isn’t just reading. Done properly, a transcription involves UNDERSTANDING and ANALYSIS. It pretty well always raises some questions, even for very familiar document types and un-remarkable documents
So easy to just download and file an image without really looking at it and evaluating what it means. And while you’re at it label your image properly – actually on the image – with a citation before you file or print it out. You’ll be grateful later.
Yes, on the image is best. File names are changed when uploaded to some sites and “metadata” is not often read and occasionally not transferred.
How do you file the transcription? As a separate doc using the same file name (so they are next to each other in your files) with “transcription” added to the end of the name? And how would you suggest that a notation be added to the original to show that a transcription was done on that doc?
I really appreciate all of the tips that you provide. Very helpful.
Using the same file name with “transcription” at the end is a good idea–of course the file type would be different. I’d also put the transcription in my genealogical database so that it’s there as well, but a separate file for the transcription is a good idea. I’m not certain that I’d do anything to the image to indicate that I had transcribed it. If the transcription were filed in the same location as the original document image, they’d show up on a list of items in the file.