The Bentham Papers Transcription Initiative

保存在UCL图书馆的边沁论文包括60，000份。这些材料从未经过适当的编辑，其中大部分从未出版过，三分之二的内容仍未转录。因此，它的大部分内容是未知的。边沁计划成立于1959年，目的是出版《杰里米·边沁文集》的权威版本，迄今为止已经出版了68卷中的26卷。2006年，该项目完成了边沁论文的在线数据库目录，包括每个论文的16个信息字段，包括标题，日期，页码和标题。该数据库目前被边沁项目用作编辑工具，例如，它可以在一瞬间识别出与某部作品相关的所有手稿，而不必经过数周的人工搜索。创建该数据库时的部分设想是通过将其与手稿的抄本和数字图像链接来增强它。边沁计划已经转录了大约20，000个字节，但还有40，000个字节有待完成。边沁著作编辑的第一阶段是译稿，也是最基本的阶段。一个试点项目已经确定，可以建立一个接口，将文字记录、数字图像和数据库目录连接起来，而且数字图像的质量可以用于转录。本项目的目标是建立一个网站，以协调一致的方式将这些不同的要素结合起来，但也将实施一种“众包”做法，即邀请公众提交他们自己的以前未读过的手稿的誊本。我们将提供约12，500张边沁手稿的图像，总计约10，000张。个人将能够下载一个转录工具，在有限的时间内拥有手稿图像的所有权，并将文本输入转录窗口。他们将被要求遵守一系列基本规则。成绩单将提交给边沁项目进行审核，一旦获得批准，将在网上提供。转录员将为每个成功的提交获得一个优点标记，这既是一种虚拟奖励，也是一种识别真正奉献的手段，然后他们可能会以某种更正式的方式参与资源。我们将建立一个用户论坛和一种进行联合转录的方法，以便两个或两个以上的人可以合作制作转录本。该转录本最终将被边沁项目的专业研究人员在为新的评论版准备材料时使用。他们还将成为“创意银行”的一部分。边沁写了各种各样的主题。他的思想具有巨大的历史意义，但也具有重大的当代意义。这些文字记录将易于搜索，以便研究人员，无论是学者还是普通公众，谁对某一特定主题感兴趣，可以发现边沁对该主题的想法。边沁项目现有的记录本目前采用专有格式，新提交的记录本将根据文本编码倡议的协议进行编码，从而保证资源的可持续性和可转让性，在项目结束时，将利用定量和定性数据，就数据库的使用方式进行研究，以及从中汲取的教训。我们会提供一个通用的转录工具，供其他人文学科的数码研究项目在其网站上使用。

The Bentham Papers deposited in UCL Library consist of 60,000 folios. This material has never been properly edited, most of it has never been published, and two-thirds of it remains un-transcribed. Much of its content is, therefore, unknown. The Bentham Project was established in 1959 in order to produce an authoritative edition of 'The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham', and has to date published twenty-six volumes of a projected sixty-eight. In 2006 the Project completed an on-line database catalogue of the Bentham Papers, consisting of up to sixteen fields of information for each of the folios, including headings, dates, pagination, and titles. The database is currently used as an editing tool by the Bentham Project, allowing it, for instance, to identify all the manuscripts relevant to a particular work in a moment, rather than after several weeks of manual searching.Part of the vision at the time of creating the database was to enhance it by linking it to transcripts and digital images of the manuscripts. The Bentham Project has transcribed around 20,000 folios, but 40,000 remain to be done. Transcription is the first and fundamental stage in the editing of Bentham's works. A pilot project has established that an interface can be created linking transcripts, digital images, and the database catalogue, and that the digital images are of such quality that they can used for the purposes of transcription. The object of the present project is to develop a web-site which will integrate these various elements in a coherent way, but which will also implement a 'crowd-sourcing' exercise, whereby members of the public will be invited to submit their own transcripts of previously unread manuscripts.The transcription project will have a limited duration of six months. We will provide around 12,500 images of Bentham's manuscripts, amounting to around 10,000 folios. Individuals will be able to download a transcription tool, take ownership for a limited duration of images of manuscripts, and enter the text into a transcription window. There will be a series of basic rules that they will be asked to follow. Transcripts will be submitted to the Bentham Project for moderating, and once approved, made available on-line. Transcribers will be awarded a merit mark for each successful submission, both as a virtual reward, and as a means of identifying the truly dedicated, who might then be involved in some more formal way with the resource. We will establish a users forum and a means of undertaking joint transcription, so that two or more people can co-operate in producing transcripts.The transcriptions will eventually be used by the professional researchers at the Bentham Project when preparing the material for the new critical edition. They will also form part of an 'ideas bank'. Bentham wrote on a wide variety of subjects. His ideas were of enormous historical importance, but are also of great contemporary relevance. The transcripts will be readily searchable, so that researchers, whether academics or members of the general public, who are interested in a particular subject, can discover what Bentham thought about that subject. The Bentham Project's existing transcripts, which are currently in a proprietary format, and the newly submitted transcripts, will be encoded according to the protocol of the Text Encoding Initiative, thus guaranteeing the sustainability and transferability of the resource.At the end of the project, a study will be produced, using both quantitative and qualitative data, on the way in which the database was used, and on the lessons to be drawn from it. A generic transcription tool will be made available for other humanities digital research projects to incorporate into their own web-sites.