[NHCOLL-L:1592] RE: Off-site keyboarding of hand-written catalogs ?

[Michael Cooper]

> Does anyone have experience with using a professional service to
> electronically transcribe catalog data from hand-written 
> volumes?  

We've done a lot of this sort of work, both on site (so we can keep our eye
on things and answer questions) or off-site (where we've had to invest in a
lot of supervision). For both we've spent quite a lot of time upfront
writing procedures (especially for parsing or for dealing with difficult to
read text) and setting up worked examples using images of source material
marked up to show how the data is transformed into the database.  Sometimes
when there's a lot of  very similar source material it's been possible to
ease off on the supervision once things get up and running and most of the
procedures have been tweaked to accommodate unforeseen quirks of data. It's
worth the investment if there's a lot of similar source material and the
data entry staff have time to get used to the method, the handwriting, etc.
long before they run out of source material to input. Other times it's just
been a pain ... However we've done it there's always been a lot of
post-input proofing. But the results have generally been very good.

Our most recent projects have used digital images of the source material
(photographs of MSS held by the local public Records Office) which we've
linked to a Microsoft Access database so that the original images are
available at the click of a button for inputting, proofing and confirmation
during subsequent use of the resulting database. This has been a most useful
method and has been set up to allow it to be very portable, i.e. a copy of
the database along with a CD of all the images can easily been ported around
to off-site users or data entry staff. We've done several thousand images in
this way from records dating back to the 1860s and varying from scribbled
notes to typescript. Again this has used a mixture of on and off-site staff.

I couldn't recommend any particular company (not that they'd be relevant to
you anyway being across the pond) as we've generally used individual
contractors that we've known a while and who have done other keyboard work
for us already. That way we can trust their commitment and motivation as
well as their accuracy and attention to detail. I belive some museums have
used companies in other countries (e.g. China) where costs are lower since,
apparently, part of the payback for the company is experience in English.
Results appear to have been mixed.

Hope this helps! Contact me if there's any further detail you need.

Michael P. Cooper
Registrar, Nottingham Museums & Galleries
Direct Line: 0115 915 3671
Fax: 0115 915 3601