Dublin City Libraries is calling for participants to join Transcription Week (Monday 28 March to Friday 1 April) as part of Europeana.eu's annual Transcribathon. The event will see individuals from all over the island unlock important historical documents and make them more easily available, free of charge, to genealogists, historians and other researchers.
The documents to be transcribed cover almost two hundred years of Dublin history from 1695 to 1881, and reveal the City’s transformation from a medieval city to the modern capital we know today. The major collections involved are the Wide Streets Commission and the Dublin City Council Manuscript Minutes.
Until now, these handwritten records have been available only in hard copy or, in some cases, as digital photographs. However, the text has not easily been accessible, and because of that these important sources have not been as widely consulted as they could be.
During Transcription Week, images of these documents will be available on the Transcribathon website. Transcribers can type in the handwritten information and enrich the documents by identifying place-names, dates or other historical data.
Plenty of support is available for transcribers. Starting next week, a series of pre-recorded videos will be released to provide more context about the record collections, how to register for a Transcribathon account, and how to use the transcribing software. During Transcription Week itself, a daily live 60-minute workshop will demonstrate how to transcribe and add to documents, and will troubleshoot any problems participants may encounter. These workshops will be held in the afternoons and are optional.
For more information, and to view some of the documents transcribed in previous Transcribathon events, see the Dublin City Library blog.