Many of our regular contributors will have seen (and indeed been interviewed for!) this article by Roberta Kwok for the New Yorker back in January of 2017. Roberta briefly describes the algorithm that merges the multiple transcriptions of pages by independent volunteers in Shakespeare’s World into a single transcription for a given page. The algorithm is called MAAFT, and is typically used to align genetic sequences. The idea behind this approach to transcription is that it allows us to combine transcriptions of smaller strings with longer strings in the same line. So, if I transcribe only one word on a line, and @parsfan and @mutabilitie transcribe the whole line, my small piece will still be counted by being compared with theirs and then slotted into the right place in the transcription. Zooniverse’s former data scientist and I decided to implement this method in an effort to enable people to contribute even small transcriptions to this relatively difficult project.
The other reasons we went for the MAAFT approach is that it means that anyone to take part in the project who wants to, without having prior paleography training. It’s ok if you make mistakes, because multiple people are transcribing the same material, so if you’ve transcribed a few letters correctly and some incorrectly, the correct ones will get taken through to the final transcription. This method of combining multiple volunteers’ efforts stems from the same scientific practices that underpin Galaxy Zoo, Penguin Watch, and all other Zooniverse projects, and is vital to the acceptance of crowdsourced data by experts in the sciences, humanities and museum and library fields. Enabling independent crowdsourcing, and then putting the results together is supposed to create a rigorous dataset, and I’m sure that it will for Shakespeare’s World in the near future, but we’re in a holding pattern until September, when a new data scientist will start working to unpick and rebuild our text aggregation process.
Rest assured that we’re not losing anyone’s work—it’s all saved in a database—but we’re not currently able to piece the separate transcriptions together reliably. This is why, in part, we have not yet published much data in the Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) database at the Folger. However, as Philip announced in previous posts on this blog, quite a few interesting finds are already being incorporated into the Oxford English Dictionary, and he says that Talk is the most effective platform for getting crowdsourced updates into the dictionary. Meanwhile our guest scholars from the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective (EMROC) have also been gathering invaluable data for their work via Talk, and many of you have been helping me gather #catholic and #womanwriter sources.
So, for now, one of the best ways to contribute to Shakespeare’s World is to hop on Talk and use those hashtags, for example #paper, #oed, #Catholic and #womanwriter. We hope to have our aggregation sorted soon, and the transcriptions freely available to all.
-By Victoria Van Hyning, @vvh
A few days before the Harry Potter series turned 20, I made my way to Stratford-Upon-Avon to visit the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and tour around the town for a few hours. Many authors and famous figures such as Charles Dickens, as well as a diverse band of Shakespeare lovers, contributed to a public fund to buy the Shakespeare property at auction in 1847, and turn it into a museum for the public good.
The Tudor property housed several generations of the Shakespeare family and their relations, and must have been a lively place. Shakespeare leased part of it as an inn called the Maindenhead, which was in operation until 1847. I was very struck by this window, formerly in the birthing room.
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century pilgrims from the UK and the USA (and elsewhere, no doubt) carved their names, and sometimes their places or origin in the glass, like so many schoolchildren on so many desks. It seems it was an accepted practice, maybe even an expected practice on the part of both the pilgrims and the caretakers of the property. Famous names include Washington Irving.
This desire to leave one’s name behind reminded me powerfully of the scene in The Deathly Hallows, the last book of the Harry Potter series, in which Harry and Hermione travel to Godrich’s Hollow in an effort to progress their quest and, though he doesn’t admit it aloud, for Harry to visit his parents’ graves. When they pass by the cottage where Harry’s parents were killed by Voldemort, and where Harry got his lightening scar, an information sign appears, which is visible to magical people only. Pilgrims have inscribed their names on it telling Harry that they’re thinking of him, wherever he is, that they’re on his side and they believe in him. Hermione is scandalized that people have graffitied the sign, but Harry is grateful for their support.
I wonder what Shakespeare would have made of this desire on the part of visitors to inscribe their names on a window of his former home? What kinds of pilgrimage marks have you come across and what do you think of them?