Like a number of other people in the class, I thought this exercise was going to be easier than it turned out to be. I have a lot of experience transcribing Medieval Latin manuscripts, and even some experience transcribing 18th century manuscripts in English for the Works of Jonathan Edwards project at Yale. I found it easy both to register for the Transcribe Bentham site and to use their transcription tool. I did not, however, find it easy to select a page for transcription. (Thanks to Melissa and Dan, who pointed out the banner with a link to un-transcribed material at the top of the Transcription Desk page.) And, of course, once I found links to the un-transcribed folios, it took a half-dozen tries to find one where I could actually read the handwriting.

I ended up transcribing JB/107/293/002, which was relatively easy, because it is a fair copy written out by one of Bentham’s copyists.

My main interest in this exercise was not to challenge my ability to read 18th and 19th century English manuscripts, but to evaluate the transcribing environment. In this regard, I think the Transcribing Bentham encoding tool compares quite well with similar systems (such as the excellent T-PEN for Medievalists.)

My only reservation about this approach to a “Big Humanities” project is that it privileges easier projects thatover more difficult projects that might have greater intrinsic scholarly value. I consider the Transcribe Bentham project (relatively) easier because a) the source manuscripts are written in the dominant language of the DH world, English, and b) the primary barrier to transcription is Bentham’s bad handwriting (i.e., transcribers do not need specialized paleographical training, which they almost certainly would for manuscripts much older than these). I understand that just because there’s certain things you can’t do (or at least can’t do easily) is not a reason not to do the things you can do. But every project has an opportunity cost, and I think we should always keep in mind which project we’d choose if all of the alternatives were equally doable.

I choose to transcribe a page concerning the role of Judges in the court system.  The page looked rather simple–having had experience with the Shelley-Godwin archives in Technoromanticism–but I found it far more of a challenge than I anticipated.  Like Charity, I ran into some difficulties deciphering Bentham’s handwriting.  There were a number of words which I struggled to make out and had to leave as questionable if not unclear.  However, nothing bothered me quite so much as this particular word:

My boyfriend and I puzzled over it for a long time, but were unable to come up with a satisfactory transcription.  I’m really hoping that someone can suggest something so that it I can stop obsessing about it.  If it helps, it is used in the following contexts:

1.  ”But [word here] who are designed by them Judges may be chosen by the People of their district”

2.  ”No harm will come from the connection which the [word here] may have in the country.”

I’m really hoping someone can see something that makes sense that alluded me.

I got a couple requests to put my pictures from last night up on the blog, and I figured I’d share the non-collaged originals:

(Those of us trekking to the metro from the Hawk & Dove were at least pleased to pass by the scenic Capitol on our way!)

What an awesome hands-on visit to the Folger–thanks to all who played a role in organizing it!

Over the past week, it came to my attention that I have not been doing a very good job of not panicking in this class.  While I did suspect that Matt was not likely to assign a failing grade to the majority of the class for not having Paper Machines working by the end of the meeting (the stated assignment), I spent most of that session feeling miserably confused.  I probably looked quite grumpy.  (I apologize to anyone at whom I may have inadvertently frowned.)  While conversing with classmates in the days that followed about this thing that felt like a disaster — I had after all (for the first time ever) failed to complete a pass/fail assignment — I started slowly realizing that I may not be as hopelessly behind the curve as I felt.  From the start, I was uncertain what to make of the assertion that failure is a good part of DH work; I thought “That’s all very well if you’re trying to make something just because you want it, but what about when my grade/job depends on success?”  I realize that I have not been a very active participant in class so far, but I think I figured out that my real problem may not be that I am technologically inept (though I am), but that I habitually operate under assumptions about good academic work that are entirely incompatible the way DH defines good work.  It will not be easy to murder the little perfectionist angel/devil on my shoulder, but it will probably do me some good if I manage it.

So, moving on, I went in search of the reason I ever even considered signing up for this class.  Last year, I attended a Digital Dialogues lecture by Mike Witmore (the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library) called “Shakespeare from the Waist Down.”  I had seen flyers for other dialogues, but I didn’t think they applied to me (due to the technological ineptitude thing), but I was curious enough to go to this one because it mentioned Shakespeare in the title.  I was astonished by the idea that something as simple as pronoun patterns could enable a computer to tell the difference between comedy, history, and tragedy, and that it could identify the late romances (a modern editorial categorization).  The link to the podcast of that talk is here, if anyone wants to watch it:  http://mith.umd.edu/digitaldialogues/mp3/dd_2012_02_21.mov.

I am also really looking forward to the Folger visit tonight.  The Shakespeare Quartos Archive is the first thing we’ve studied that I’ve actually seen before!  I don’t know exactly what I may do, but I hope to pursue it further.  Collation and archiving seem the sorts of things I am most likely to use in the future, so I’m happy to be on somewhat more familiar territory!  So, stay tuned; I promise I’ll have something more interesting to say soon.

(And maybe, someday, I’ll even figure out how to take screenshots!)