Introduction
If you are planning a research project or applying for funding, you can contact me to get free advice and estimates. I have experience of working with universities in the UK and US on large projects, some of them funded by the AHRC, ESRC, or Leverhulme Trust. Advice will be tailored to your project. The earlier you contact me the better. There will be no obligation to use my services if your application is successful. I will give honest and impartial advice based on my experience. Even if I am not able to do the work myself, I can give you useful information. We will need to consider methods, timescale, and cost. See below for more details.
Transcription methods
There are several ways that a large project can get documents transcribed:
- contracting out to me and/or other experienced professionals who run small businesses.
- outsourcing to large businesses.
- employing transcribers in-house.
- crowdsourcing.
- Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) software.
Each of these methods has different advantages and disadvantages, which means that they are not always in competition with each other, and sometimes some of them can be combined. I will give an honest assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of each method, which will depend on several factors, including:
- the total amount of transcription to be done.
- the difficulty of the handwriting and language.
- straightness of lines and curvature of pages in the original manuscripts (this particularly affects HTR).
- the quality of document images that you have or can get.
- how quickly you need the transcription to be completed.
- the level of quality you need. This is especially important if you are intending to publish the transcripts.
- whether you want to create general-purpose full transcripts, or select only parts of the text relevant to a specific research question.
- the copyright status and licence conditions of the documents.
- your university's terms and conditions about copyright and indemnity for outside contractors.
- your and your university's ethical standards.
- how much and what kind of public engagement your project needs.
Although you will not be obliged to use my services, if you do want me to take part in the project I can be flexible about my role and employment status:
- I can work as a self-employed contractor with right of control. I may be able to do all of the transcription but if there's more than I can do, you could split the work between multiple businesses. I have experience of winning competitive tenders.
- if you have a very large amount of work and choose to outsource it to a large business, I could still add value by carrying out extra checks and corrections.
- I am open to being an in-house employee. If you employ several transcribers, I could train them all in my methods.
- if you crowdsource some or all of the transcription, I could help with task design, quality checks, and giving feedback to volunteers.
- if you choose Handwritten Text Recognition software, I could supply model transcripts and feedback to train the software on your documents. HTR and my expert transcription services occupy different niches and are mostly not in competition with each other.
Timescale
Given a sample of the documents you need to be transcribed, I can estimate how many hours and weeks it would take me to do the work on my own. From this, we can estimate a timescale for one or more contractors or an in-house team.
Cost
For general information, see my current prices. If you contact me, I can give a more precise estimate for your project, as it depends on the number of pages, number of words per page, difficulty of handwriting, and image quality. You will need to compare this with estimates from other suppliers and with the cost of in-house employment. Universities usually require competitive tenders for contracts of more than a few thousand pounds. I have experience of winning tenders by competing on cost and quality.