Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

PasturesNew

I have a theory about archives too....

It seems to me that there's a whole bunch of "stuff" stored - and nobody has a clue what it is. A small number of people with access can go in there and just get the box/book they want, then sit for 3-4 years writing about something and saying they read that book and it said "... insert 1 paragraph ..." about their pet subject.

I think it's time now for "crowd transcription" - like trove.au do their newspapers - if everything were just scanned in by "regular people" then people around the world would have a vested interest in searching through it all - and transcribing bits and bobs here and there.... over time ending up with everything transcribed and fully searchable "for free".

With 1000 people searching and transcribing bits and bobs here and there they'd be able to highlight all sorts of connections between documents - and curate instances of individuals being mentioned etc - all of which could be tossed into the air .... and academics could spend their time accessing more research material for whatever it is they're interested in, so they'd benefit too.

While a newspaper sits unscanned in a warehouse somewhere, never read, nobody will ever realise that on page 47 there was a clue that everybody was looking for for the Ripper, say .... or where their granddad ended up .... or that X did meet Y which might've lead to Hitler doing something they'd wondered about.

An innocent snippet about any one thing can include clues for searchers of other truths.

But we'll never see it as we don't have access to the physical form ...and there's no way to search that from around the world if we wake up at 3am and decide to go "data hunting".

I LOVE data hunting. I'll often just dip into old digitised newspapers with random/odd phrases to see what it throws up. Favourites include: "strange death", "body in well", "strange case of bigamy".... all those social history bits and bobs that unveil the strange lives of odd characters.

As for transcription - the trove.au version enables anybody to edit the transcription. In UK papers I can search for something, but I've found just as many items about people in my tree by searching for other phrases around their actual names, because the digitisation produced corrupt OCR.

I'd sign up for a spot of that .....

Anybody who hasn't seen/used Trove - go here and type in, say, the name of your small village .... you might find that people went from there to Aus, lived a long life, died and you get the whole obit, for free, right on your screen.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper?q=

Pyxis

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'll often just dip into old digitised newspapers with random/odd phrases to see what it throws up. Favourites include: "strange death", "body in well", "strange case of bigamy".... all those social history bits and bobs that unveil the strange lives of odd characters.

Has there ever been "Body found on building site"?

GDB2222

LydiaJ wrote: »

Me too. I've only recently realised there hasn't been a Zaire for 20 years.

It's really confusing now, as there are two countries: Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo.

vivatifosi

PasturesNew wrote: »

I have a theory about archives too....

It seems to me that there's a whole bunch of "stuff" stored - and nobody has a clue what it is. A small number of people with access can go in there and just get the box/book they want, then sit for 3-4 years writing about something and saying they read that book and it said "... insert 1 paragraph ..." about their pet subject.

I disagree. People - librarians and archivists, have given huge amounts of time cataloguing these collections. In some instance they have spent their whole career working cataloguing at just one one archive and saying that nobody has a clue what is there is factually incorrect. Collections are however dynamic. They receive bequests all the time and these can wait to be catalogued. What they don't have time to do is transcribe everything. In each archive there will literally be tens of millions of documents. So they build a comprehensive index of their holdings.

Say for example I order a copy of a will. The archive will know that the will for that person exists, the name can be found on their catalogue. Whether a digital copy of the will exists will depend on whether it has previously been requested, whether it has already been part of a digitisation project. These have to be done systematically, or when someone pays to have theirs done. The problem with letting the public help is that they are interested in their bit. The role of the archivist and/or archive librarian is to identify those parts of greatest importance and work through systematically. Equally the documents can be very fragile and require the work of a conservator and specialist handling, particularly if they are hundreds of years old.

PasturesNew wrote: »

I think it's time now for "crowd transcription" - like trove.au do their newspapers - if everything were just scanned in by "regular people" then people around the world would have a vested interest in searching through it all - and transcribing bits and bobs here and there.... over time ending up with everything transcribed and fully searchable "for free".

Trove is a project of National Libraries of Australia. So the point is that it is being run by librarians and archivists who have done the up front work in terms of scanning and maintenance of bibliographic records. They are controlling the project so that you can search on it.

In this country the equivalent is the British Newspaper Archive, which is run by the British Library and adds new papers all the time (probably from the place in Boston Spa that was mentioned earlier). They have huge machines capable of mass digitisation. The British Newspaper Archive can be accessed free of charge from many library computers, or from the BNA directly for a subscription of £6.67 per month, or for a one off £12.95 for a single month of what they call unlimited access, but in effect allows access to 3000 articles (which is still great value).

PasturesNew wrote: »

While a newspaper sits unscanned in a warehouse somewhere, never read, nobody will ever realise that on page 47 there was a clue that everybody was looking for for the Ripper, say .... or where their granddad ended up .... or that X did meet Y which might've lead to Hitler doing something they'd wondered about.

An issue here is copyright. Before the British Library can mass digitise papers and make them available to the public, there are rights issues to be overcome. Copyright is definitely a librarian specialism and is hugely complicated. Especially if the paper folded decades ago and they have to undertake detective work to identify who the rights holders are.

PasturesNew wrote: »

But we'll never see it as we don't have access to the physical form ...and there's no way to search that from around the world if we wake up at 3am and decide to go "data hunting".

You can access it straight away if you pay £12.95, or you can wait until Monday and check whether it is available at your local library. I'm not sure whether it is in your county, if it's not, then it will probably be in the adjacent one. I think, but I'm not certain, that some of the newspapers that are linked to in the family history tools such as FMP are from the BNA. So they are what you'll have access to on the free weekends.

If it doesn't suit you to go to the library, why not build a list of all of the people you want to find out about, then have a one month binge? If you are planning this, I would advise a trip to the library first, just so that you know what you are getting for your money.

SingleSue

Book shops are fatal places for me, James and Joe to visit, we pretty much get lost in them (as in mentally rather than physically) and don't want to leave, they are also rather unhealthy for our budgets as we cannot seem to leave one empty handed.

Josh on the other hand has never been into books, I tried everything when he was younger, we are a family of book readers but he just couldn't 'get' the attraction of having his head buried in a book.

On our visit to London a little while back, we were actually making our way to Foyles but decided to abandon our quest when we realised we just didn't have enough time to enjoy it before we would have had to leave.

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

Has there ever been "Body found on building site"?

Yes. On findmypast's newspapers that gives 5 results.

Looking through those you get to choose:
- something from The Stage, so that might turn out to be a play rather than real.
- a non-result where the result isn't actually about that at all, but spans a story of a child's body found + an advert for a building plot
- 1947, body of Elizabeth Short, found on a building site, murder.
- 1953 nurse's body found on a site, suicide. Sister Isabella King, aged 40.
- 1997, TV listings.

So not a great yield.

CKhalvashi

zagubov wrote: »

I think you need about 9000 to get anywhere. So if you can get a flight for £80 including taxes, that's better than avios. Otherwise, the avios might be better.

I find Wizzair + regular flyer discount or another budget airline is often cheaper than both Avios within Europe.

More availability (don't know if this issue is any better now than it was) and less hassle, too. With a bit of date wrangling it's possible to get anywhere in Europe for less than £80ish return (the only exception is Luton-Kutaisi due to APD, although Pegasus is cheaper anyway all things considered and Georgian Airways will be direct and include bags, with the added bonus of not dumping you 250km from where you want to go at 3am) and if I'm flying from my local airport it's a lot easier than getting to Heathrow by public transport, relying on OH or paying £1m a day for parking.

The only issue for me personally (which is less so for most NP) is that Wizz fly from Luton, and are unfortunately often the only ones flying to particular destinations.

zagubov

SingleSue wrote: »

Book shops are fatal places for me, James and Joe to visit, we pretty much get lost in them (as in mentally rather than physically) and don't want to leave, they are also rather unhealthy for our budgets as we cannot seem to leave one empty handed.

Josh on the other hand has never been into books, I tried everything when he was younger, we are a family of book readers but he just couldn't 'get' the attraction of having his head buried in a book.

On our visit to London a little while back, we were actually making our way to Foyles but decided to abandon our quest when we realised we just didn't have enough time to enjoy it before we would have had to leave.

I'm the same. Most cities with a university seem to have at least one bookshop that's like an Aladdin's Cave of good finds. It's amazing how many good books there are out there, and if I owned one, I'd be lost in reading them, probably never open it to customers.:eek:

CKhalvashi

I am partly caught up, will finish later.

Congrats Mas.

SingleSue

zagubov wrote: »

I'm the same. Most cities with a university seem to have at least one bookshop that's like an Aladdin's Cave of good finds. It's amazing how many good books there are out there, and if I owned one, I'd be lost in reading them, probably never open it to customers.:eek:

We have an amazing second hand book shop in our local town, thousands upon thousands of books where we could (and frequently have), lose ourselves for an entire day.

It was the first place that Joe felt comfortable going into on his own, he finds books and reading comforting and bookshops themselves, a place where he feels that the world makes sense for once.

I once thought that working in a library might be a good move for me until I realised that I would all too easily become distracted by all the knowledge around me, forget the world and curl up in the corner with a good book, I'd probably end up sacked within a week :rotfl: