MarineLives - User contributions [en-gb]

Kick Off Meeting 20 August

2012-08-16T14:20:20Z

Margaretschotte: Comment added.

'''Kick Off Meeting 20 August'''

'''Editorial history'''

08/08/12: SL, created page
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__TOC__
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==Suggested links==

See [[Schedule|Schedule]]
See [[Conference January 2013 discussion page|Conference January 2013 discussion page]]
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==Suggested goals==

* Strengthen team

* Communicate and discuss project process and schedule

* Train team members, especially facilitators, in palaeography

* Test and discuss online training material which will be used with project associates in week commencing September 3rd

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==Things to be discussed==

* Project goals

* Project process

* User needs and proposed technical solutions

- Hands on demo of technical solutions and

* Palaeography training needs of project facilitators (and ?project advisors)

* Palaeography training needs of project associates and discussion of how best to train project associates using online resources

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==Possible agenda==

'''Please give me your views on the proposed agenda and timings below. The start time of 10.00 a.m. Uk time is suggested to enable Stuart to get there from Reading, and to ensure that any US dial-in participants don't need to call in before 5.00 a.m. U.S. East Coast time''' (Colin)

- Details of dial-in arrangements will be posted on this page before Monday. Jo is sorting them out now (Colin)
- Participants should bring laptops and powercables (if available) with them to TNA, Kew, on Monday August 20th

Location: The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU. For sat navs use the postcode TW9 4AD (Bessant Drive).
Instructions to get to TNA: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/visit/where.htm

Proposed start: 10.00 a.m. (UK time)
Proposed end: 16.00 (UK time)

10.00-10.30 Welcome; introductions & personal goals; project goals (Colin & all participants)

10.30-11.30 Transcription process proposal; editorial policy proposal (Colin, William, Jill; Charlene)

11.30-12.30 Project processes and user needs; technology proposal, demo, & discussion (Stuart & Colin, with Giovanni by phone)

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-16.00 Palaeography training (Colin; other facilitators; Charlene; National Archives palaeographer (if available)); including demonstration of various online resources which have been developed to support individuals and teams in the transcription process

- Facilitators need to discuss this together before Mon. August 20th; and also need to discuss this with Charlene before Mon. August 20th, in context of latest draft of ''MarineLives Editorial Method/Directions for Transcribers''
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==Physical attendees==

Dr Stuart Dunn (Confirmed)
Colin Greenstreet (Confirmed)
Jo Pugh (Confirmed)
William Tullett (Confirmed)
Jill Wilcox (Confirmed)

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==Dial in/web conference attendees==

Dr Charlene Eska (from East Coast, USA) (advisor)
Giovanni Colavizza (from Friuli, Italy) (advisor & associate)
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==Possible physical or dial in/web attendee==

Richard Blakemore (advisor) - depends on state of his PhD submission
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==Unable to attend==

Alex Calvo (associate) - in Taiwan
Sarah Laseke (facilitator) - working
Patrizia Rebulla - working on MPhil thesis
Ida Sjoberg (associate) - on holiday
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==Status unknown==

Angus Gorrie (associate)
Emma Hardy (associate)
Jerome Mockett (associate)
Gordon O'Sullivan (associate)
Marta Rezzano (associate)
Margaret Schotte (advisor; Princeton, USA)
Tommy Walters (associate)
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[[Comments]]
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''2012-08-10 16:40:47'' [[nbsp]] Please use this comments box to express your views as to the goals, agenda, etc. of the planned kick off meeeting --[[Users/ColinGreenstreet|Users/ColinGreenstreet]]
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''2012-08-11 06:50:41'' [[nbsp]] Please would all readers of this page record whether they are planning to attend the August 20th kick off meeting. Will they be physically present, or so they plan to dial in or log in from a remote location? Jo Pugh of the National Archives is exploring what dial in or log in options may be available. --[[Users/ColinGreenstreet|Users/ColinGreenstreet]]
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''2012-08-11 17:31:54'' [[nbsp]] I will definitely be able to attend Jill Wilcox --[[Users/jillwilcox|Users/jillwilcox]]
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''2012-08-15 18:42:51'' [[nbsp]] I have added a draft agenda, and start and finish times for the August 20th meeting. Please comment. --[[Users/ColinGreenstreet|Users/ColinGreenstreet]]
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''2012-08-16 12:23:42'' [[nbsp]] I can attend via dial-in. Just let me know the instructions. --[[Users/charleneeska|Users/charleneeska]]
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''2012-08-16 15:20:19'' [[nbsp]] I would like to try to dial in from Toronto for some portion of the day--perhaps the 11:30-12:30 Project Processes? --[[Users/margaretschotte|Users/margaretschotte]]

Model emails to potential volunteers

2012-08-10T11:55:34Z

Margaretschotte:

'''Model emails to potential volunteers'''

'''Editorial history'''

10/08/12: CSG, created page
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'''Purpose of this page'''

This page has been created to provide project team members with model emails (which they are welcome to modify) to use in adverting volunteer opportunities.

See Margaret Schotte's request for such models in [[Colin%27s Page#head-adba46e6fe40b83867924164a91905e418e574f0|Latest news: project volunteer candidates]]
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__TOC__
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==Call for Volunteers: Short form==

Dear [INSERT NAME]

MarineLives - Call for Project Volunteers

We are recruiting volunteer project experts, project facilitators and project associates for MarineLives, a project using collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of High Court of Admiralty primary manuscripts, 1650-1669.

MarineLives is an innovative academic project for the collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of primary manuscripts, which were originated in the High Court of Admiralty, London, 1650-1669. The end product will be a publicly and freely available online academic edition.

The project is being conducted with the support of The National Archives, Kew, and will work collaboratively on high quality digital images for a complete volume of the court's records, selected from the period 1650-1669.

Please contact the project team (collaborate@marinelives.org), if you would like further information, or access the project website (http://www.marinelives.org).

Very best wishes

[INSERT NAME]

[INSERT YOUR CONTACT DETAILS]

Web: http://www.marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg

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==Call for Volunteers: Long form==

Dear [INSERT NAME]

MarineLives - Call for Project Volunteers

We are recruiting volunteer project experts, project facilitators and project associates for MarineLives, a project using collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of High Court of Admiralty primary manuscripts, 1650-1669.

MarineLives is an innovative academic project for the collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of primary manuscripts, which were originated in the High Court of Admiralty, London, 1650-1669. The end product will be a publicly and freely available online academic edition.

The project is being conducted with the support of The National Archives, Kew, and will work collaboratively on high quality digital images for a complete volume of the court's records, selected from the period 1650-1669.

The C17th High Court of Admiralty in London dealt with a range of maritime and commercial issues, including ship seizures during times of war, and wage disputes involving ships' crews, captains, owners, and freighters. The court's records provide a rich source of commercial, material and social history, as well as a source of maritime detail. They cover English, Scottish, Irish, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Genoese, Tuscan, Venetian, and Ottoman merchants, mariners, ships and trade.

We are now seeking academics to join us as part-time volunteer project advisors and project facilitators (twenty to fifty hours commitment between August and December 2012). Project induction and training will be provided in August 2012, with full project kick-off in early September 2012.

Project associates, who are asked to volunteer fifty hours of research time between September and December 2012, will be drawn from interested postgraduates, graduates, school students, and amateur local and maritime historians, both within and outside the United Kingdom.

Volunteers for all three roles (project expert, project facilitator, and project associate) are welcome from both within and outside the United Kingdom. We have a particular interest in recruiting English speaking project volunteers from Barbados, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. Current team members include public historians, postgraduates, and academics in London, Cambridge, Oxford, Nottingham, Princeton, Virginia, and Brussels.

This project offers participants an opportunity to acquire and deepen their digital editorial, project management, semantic markup and data mining skills.

Please contact the project team (collaborate@marinelives.org), if you would like further information, or access the project website (http://www.marinelives.org)

Very best wishes

[INSERT NAME]

[INSERT YOUR CONTACT DETAILS]

Web: http://www.marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg

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==Followup email to a responder expressing interest: Long form==

Dear [INSERT NAME]

Many thanks for interest in MarineLives and your enquiry about volunteering opportunities. My name is [INSERT NAME], and I am [INSERT ROLE] on the MarineLives project.

Below I have included more information about the project, with an explanation of the project structure, way of working, and timing. The spirit of the project is collaborative and respectful of the different skills and experience which we all bring when we volunteer our time.

It would be great to learn a bit more about you and your interests. May I also ask how you heard about the project?

I look forward to hearing from you again once you have had a chance to read the material.

'''Background'''

This project is a public/academic initiative. It is organised on a not for profit basis and aims to make freely and publicly available a high quality edition of one year's worth of High Court of Admiralty primary manuscripts (that's about 1000 pages). It is a Proof of Concept, and as such has been supported by the National Archives (TNA), who have agreed to allow the project team to digitise the chosen volume and make available the images to the project team, and who are taking an interest in the project. TNA is not providing funding. Our budget is minimal, since the project is a volunteer based project, and is making use of foundation supported hosted servers and opensource SW.

The Proof of Concept will hopefully assist TNA as it thinks about its digital strategy, about crowdsourcing, and about maximising the benefits from the capabilities of the new Discovery search engine which TNA is now rolling out.

We are in the process of forming a core team to drive this project. The small core team team will consist of academics and public historians, and is not yet complete. We have a need, for example, for an individual with strong GIS skills and interest as a project expert, since we are hoping to integrate the transcription process and semantic markup to the mapping and display of data and subsets of the data, ideally on the fly, as seen in www.oldweather.org.

Core project team members in London, Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton and Virginia Tech are working on structuring the team and setting the planned processes. In addition to the core team we plan to take content and functional advice from a broader range of academics, and would welcome input and comment generally. But it is important to stress that the project is conceived from the start as a combined academic and public history initiative, and that we welcome public local and marine historians, and history students, of all ages to work on the project.

This project is a Proof of Concept, for which we will set targets in terms of recruitment, productivity, and quality, and then evaluate ourselves against those targets. It could be that it is unsuccessful, but we will strive to learn from the project as we go, and refine our approach to improve the processes and results.

The reason for setting indicative numbers for time to be committed to the project lies in the nature of the process we wish to pursue. We have described the process as collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment, rather than "crowd sourcing." This is deliberate. We will be providing one online facilitator to every three or four project associates, and it is the role of that facilitator to assist both with content and process, helping with palaeography when needed, answering technical queries over inputting and editing a wiki, helping broaden the thinking of the project associates who are working on all three aspects of the project - transcription, linkage, and enrichment. This is a significant investment of time in the associates, who we are seeking out amongst postgrads, undergrads, year twelve and thirteen school students, and amateur ("public") local historians and marine historians. One of the decisions we still have to make is whether to mix types of project associate under one facilitator, or to group those of one kind under a facilitator. That will be for our team to decide, and perhaps we will experiment.

Once the team is properly formed and has engaged in the project as a team we will expand our public website to be as transparent as possible.

'''MarineLives project organisation'''

We plan to run the project as follows:

Project leader and facilitator: Colin Greenstreet
Project facilitators: Between four and six volunteer facilitators to be recruited & trained (plus project director)
Project associates: Between twenty and twenty-four volunteer project associates to be recruited & trained
Project advisors: Five to six volunteer project advisors to be recruited & trained (technology + functional content)
Ratios: Facilitators/Associates (ca. 1:3, max of 1:4)
Rarios: Advisors/total project members (ca. 3-4 out of ca. 30-40)
Kickoff with advisors & facilitators: 20th 2012 at the National Archives, Kew (with remote attendees by phone or web)
Kick off with project associates: September 3rd 2012 (probably a web conference call)
End of project: December 14th

Time commitment: Project advisors: 10-20 hours over 14 weeks
Time commitment: Project facilitators: 50 hours over 14 weeks
Time commitment: Project associates: 50 hours over 14 weeks

'''Immediate next steps'''

July 9th to July 31st

* Finalize choice of facilitators (ideally some mix of academic teachers, post-docs & post-grads, high school teachers, local historians, and a marine historians)
* Recruit as many as possible of the project associates, but also use signed up facilitators to reach out to individuals they know

August 1st to August 31st

* Train facilitators online
* Work with facilitators to prepare online training material for associates
* Face-to face one day meeting at TNA to look and feel the documents we will be working on, to meet TNA staff, and to practice technical and palaeographical skills. This meeting to consist of project facilitators & project advisors (August 20th)
* Project leaders & facilitators to create a digital backbone for the project, with all images checked for quality and readability, and meta data created and input into wiki

September 3rd to December 14th

* Allocation of facilitators to project associates
* Training of project associates directed and supported by facilitators
* Kick off transcription (plus linkage and enrichment) work
* Monthly on line review conferences using e-conferencing

'''Project expert and project facilitator roles'''

These two roles are best understood in the context of the project plan above The project experts and project facilitators will together form the core project team.

Examples of academics at different stages in their careers, who have joined MarineLives as volunteer project advisors:

* Richard Blakemore, a doctoral candidate at Selwyn, is a project advisor on HCA documentation on the MarineLives project as well as contributing insight into mid-C17th marine matters (http://cambridge.academia.edu/RichardBlakemore). He will be working next year on a European Research Council grant on a two year cross-European project on mariners' wages run by a principal investigator at the University of Exeter, and has four years of experience dealing with HCA and other marine records from the early C17th

* Dr Stuart Dunn, a lecturer in digital humanities and a landscape archaeologist at King's College, London, is a project advisor on virtual collaboration (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/groups/cerch/people/dunn/index.aspx). He is currently co-investigator for an ongoing AHRC funded study of crowd sourcing, and has a strong academic interest in virtual collaboration.

We are in discussion with several more academics about joining as project advisors. As remarked above, we have a particular need for an individual with strong GIS skills and interest. The aim is to have complementary skills amongst both experts and facilitators.

The role of facilitator is if anything more important than that of project advisor. Facilitators may be post docs, graduate students, public local historians, or indeed more experienced academics. Key to this role will be people skills, an interest in supporting and training and developing project associates as some of them struggle with palaeography for the first time. As a core team we are building online training material in August to provide as much online help for the basics as possible. One of the big value adds from the facilitators will be at the linkage and enrichment stage. At this stage, the experience of public local and marine historians, of museum based educationalits, and other experienced people, is likely to be invaluable in suggesting other secondary and primary sources to attempt to link people, places, events, etc in the transcriptions.

'''Recruitment of project associates'''

We are hoping that at least two schools may participate in the MarineLives project

Dr Gareth Mann, head of history at the highly academic Westminster School in London, has expressed an interest in the project and is offering four ambitious year twelve (soon to be year thirteen) history students as project associates. These students plan to apply to demanding academic history departments for undergraduate study.

We are also exploring possible participation in the same project by a teacher and students at a state academy school in the West Midlands, and a London comprehensive school.

The above is in addition to approaching local and marine historical societies, and using digital humanities mailing groups and other mailing lists in UK and overseas, to publicise the project and to recruit for all three types of role. See, for example, the announcement on the IHR website (http://www.history.ac.uk/news/2012-07-12/marinelives-call-project-volunteers).

We have established a project website (http://www.marinelives.org) to facilitate recruitment and also a project Twitter account (@marinelivesorg), again to facilitate recruitment, and later to maintain interest and cohesiveness amongst project members.

Very best wishes

[INSERT NAME]

[INSERT YOUR CONTACT DETAILS]

Web: http://www.marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg
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==Chaseup email to a responder who has not followed up on long form background email==

Dear [INSERT NAME]

You expressed an interest in the MarineLives project some time ago, and I would like to let you know how the project has developed since I first responded to your enquiry.

We have moved the project on considerably in terms of building the project team, and in our preparations to launch the project.

We now have five project advisors (Dr Stuart Dunn (Lecturer, digital humanities - KCL); Richard Blakemore (PhD candidate, C17th marine history - Selwyn, Cambridge); Dr Charlene Eska (assistant professor, linguistics/palaeography - Virginia Tech, US); Margaret Schotte (PhD candidate, C17th & C18th history of marine science - Princeton); and Jo Pugh (National Archives, Kew).

In addition to me as project advisor/facilitator [MODIFY AS APPROPRIATE], we have three further facilitators - a graduate student at KCL (formerly at Mansfield College, Oxford, 1st class history degree), a graduate student at LMH, Oxford (formerly at Groningen), and a secondary school teacher, who is an experienced local historian and palaeographer. We are looking for one, possibly two, further project facilitators, and are keen to have one based in North America.

We have ten project associates, and are looking for a further ten to fifteen such associates, as well as a further two project facilitators. Our project associates are drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds, including an archivist at the National Maritime Museum, a writer of historical novels, an editor of a digital edition of Mozart's letters, several students at Westminster school in London, and several third year history undergraduates at Nottingham University.

The team is looking quite international with members born in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Canada, and the US.

We are kicking the project off with the core group of advisors and facilitators on Monday 20th August at the National Archives, Kew, and with the full team of project associates in the week commencing September 3rd, by web conference. We are also hoping to hold a post end of project conference, provisionally in the last week of January 2013, which all project members will be invited to attend, together with invited academics, archivists, school teachers, and public historians.

Dr Eska will be assisting the MarineLives project team with (a) defining palaeography training needs (b) pointing towards palaeographical online (and hardcopy) resources (c) helping to set editorial policy and standards (d) acting as an expert to resolve palaeographical problems which cannot be resolved in the individual facilitated project teams.

An article about our project will appear in this September's issue of History Today. Attached below to this email is a near final proof, should you be interested in reading it.

It would be good to hear whether you would like to discuss our project further by phone.

Very best wishes

[INSERT NAME]

[INSERT YOUR CONTACT DETAILS]

Web: http://www.marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg
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==Standard data for signature==

Web: http://www.marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg
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==Proof copy of History Today MarineLives article==

View or download article on MarineLives to be published in the History Matters section of History Today, September 2012:

[http://independent.academia.edu/ColinGreenstreet/Books/1854649/On_the_crest_of_a_wave On the crest of a wave]

Editors' Page

2012-08-10T01:37:07Z

Margaretschotte: Comment added.

'''Editors' Page'''

'''Editorial history'''

08/08/12, CSG: Created page
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__TOC__
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==Draft Project Manual Plan==
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===Project Plan: Version One: August 5th 2012===

(1) Project goals, incl. possible conference in January

(2) Project schedule
(2.1) News page - to update with results of meetings and so on.
(2.2) Schedule week by week (using the one Colin sent to the new member yesterday as it is up to date)
- Include info about kick off meeting here/perhaps an agenda of things to be discussed

(3) Team structure & vacancies (how many facilitators and associates are we still looking for)

(4) Short team bios, concentrating on real demonstrated skills of individuals (e.g. Latin, German, Italian reading ability; SW skills; Palaeography...) Include contact email address and possibly phone numbers for those mentioned (even Skype? Although not sure about that one). (We could email around and ask for a short bio + contact details from each person with a maximum word limit)
Split into advisors, facilitators, associates.

(5) Training

(5.1)- Palaeography of HCA legal records
(5.1.1) - Palaeography general resources + links (some on wiki, some extra I've found)
(5.1.2) - Terms and dictionaries of relevant words. (I think we can take most of this from Colin's wiki subject to his approval?
(5.1.2.1) Legal
(5.1.2.2) Geographical/Alphabet of places
(5.1.2.3) Marine
(5.1.2.4) Alphabet of Ships
(5.1.3) - Challenges + postings go here. (Individual pages for each one)
(5.1.4) - List of broad themes (like those in the challenges and on Colin's wiki) to look out for in initial transcription so people can mark them briefly.
(5.1.5) Links to useful articles/secondary material online for those who don't necessarily have 17thC marine life as the main focus of their research.(Colin/Richard to provide links perhaps? Although I don't mind hunting things down myself!)

(5.2) - Creating a wiki page and editing a wiki page
(5.2.1) - Creating a wiki page
(5.2.2) - Editing a wiki page
(5.2.2.1) - Inserting and editing text
(5.2.2.2) - Cropping and inserting images

(6) Possibly a forum, people may just email each other anyway at first but as the project grows I think it would certainly be something to think about. Or we could have a page with a box where associates could post messages that would then go to facilitators or something akin to that. A suggestion box might be useful as well?
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===Project Plan: Version One: Colin's Comments: August 5th 2012===

Feedback on your project plans

2.1 News page - good idea (I think that can also be set up as an RSS feed, so if project team members subscribe that teh nerws page gets pushed to their email)

2.2 Project schedule. Should be regularly updated. Suggest we have a text version, with dot points on key actions and key targeted achievements (essentially interim process goals), and also a very simpla gantt chart (can be done in Excel, and easily updated - I'll send you an example from one of my Concordas consulting projects)

Suggest a specific page about kickoff meeting, including a preliminary agenda, with a comments box at the bottom, and ask people to comment on that page about the agenda with improvement ideas. This will help encourage people to start using the project wiki regularly. Learn about inserting comment boxes in wiki by going to:

Help with Editing (you see help with editing at the bottom of every Wikispot wiki page when you are in wiki edit mode)

Specifically see: http://wikispot.org/Comments

(3) Team structure, including names and roles , yes, and vacacies - very good idea

Suggest don't use a pyramid chart (suggesting rigid reporting hierachy), but instead concentric circle chart, with me and advisors and facilitators in a middle ring, with the ring boundary a dotted line not a heavy line, then associates in next concentric ring, then a final ring (all separated by dotted lines) showing academics, school students and teachers, and public historians. If you draw it clevely, you position the facilitators in the inner ring with "their" associates near them in the next ring, then draw a venn diagram like oval, also with dotted line to embrace a named facilitator and "their" associates. I bet you Patrizia (who likes this sort of thing) or Giovanni Colavizza (our most expert IT web coding guy) could qrite some HTML code, so that you click on a name on the diagram and it goes to the short bio/skills description. But this is nice to have only, and not exactly a priority

(4) Team bios. May want to put on one page, and do alphabetically. You can create links at the top of a page from a name, which will then take you to the correct bio on that page

(5.1.1) Palaeography. Yes, but we need to get more specific. What are the sort of palaeographical problems we will have with HCA documents. e.g. punctuation, capitalisation, distinguishing vowels. Take a look at: Policy issues in the Transcription page under Admiralty court cases in bron.wikispot.org

(5.1.2) Welcome to use my draft dictionaries. I think they can probably be extended prior to 3rd Sep., and we should get them into the new project wiki, and also all my HCA content, then encourage everyone to search the HCA content and play with adding stuff to these dictionaries. Get's people trained in wiki use without them realising. Content can simply be copied in edit mode from one wiki to another.

See [[Commodities|Commodities]]
See [[Geography|Geography]]
See [[Shipping terminology|Shipping terminology]]

5.1.3-1.15 I like all of these

5.2 Like 5.2.1 and 5.2.3, but think you need 5.2.3 = searching the wiki. Probably enough simply to copy from my wiki into new project wiki the page: Searching the wiki

6. Forum page is good on wiki. Someone should host that forum page and activley manage it. Let's get as much shared on the forum as possible, rather than emails, since so much good stuff in email gets lost. Topics on a forum can be reorganised very easily by any contrinutor in edit mode, and all associates, facilitators and advisors should have edit privileges

I look forward to seeing a revised draft once you have incorporated relevant feedback from associates (?and advisors if possible)

On palaeography I will let you know as soon as I have spoken with Charlene Eske, since I think she will have good thoughts on palaeography training. Also Jo Pugh at TNA can put you in touch with TNA palaorgaphy expert, who I am hoping will come to our kickoff, and perhaps co-run a training session with a team member, using HCA examples
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===William Tullett suggestions, August 7th 2012===

(In email to Colin, cc Sarah)

Dear Colin,

Thank you for the details regarding all of the individuals on the project. I haven't had any replies from the associates, all of whom we have emailed asking about their ideas on training provision on the wiki but hopefully we will get some input soon as it's only been a few days.

I think, although I have not asked Sarah on this yet, that the project wiki and the wiki for the input of transcribed content should be separate but perhaps have them linked by a tab on each of them so it's easy to get between them. Me and Sarah have yet to produce a more detailed plan but below are some thoughts.

A few things I wanted to ask:

1) Have you set up the project training wiki and therefore would you be able to provide I and Sarah with the details for it? Sarah and I have talked about the possibility of using Wordpress for the project training site, with which Sarah has experience and the possibility of using Scripto for transcription. Do you have any opinions on this and is the preferred option to use a wiki?

2) In terms of copy for the wiki could you provide a blurb for the project goals page? I was going to cobble together a project goals section from the 'Project high level description' you sent me on the 14th July and the various call for papers/history today article but I felt perhaps it would be better for you to prepare this as it is, of course, your entrepreneurial spirit which started and continues to feed the project and I wouldn't want to put words in your mouth about the end goals!

I will try and put together a list of useful secondary resources for the training pages but if you have suggestions that would be great. I wonder what, since I should imagine the training wiki would be privately accessed by password (?) the policy on putting up some pdfs of journal articles would be. Obviously if the wiki were public I understand this would not be allowed. Perhaps links to wikipedia pages would suffice but this is entirely at your discretion and is something I will ask associates about.

3) In terms of schedule me and Sarah currently have this from an earlier email

"August 1st to August 31st

* Train facilitators online
* Work with facilitators to prepare online training material for associates
* Face-to face one day meeting at TNA (August 20th) to look and feel the documents we will be working on, to meet TNA staff, and to practice technical and palaeographical skills. This meeting to consist of project facilitators & project experts
* Project leaders & facilitators to create a digital backbone for the project, with all images checked for quality and readability, and meta data created and input into wiki

September 3rd to December 14th

* Allocation of facilitators to project associates
* Training of project associates directed and supported by facilitators
* Kick off transcription (plus linkage and enrichment) work
* Monthly on line review conferences using e-conferencing"

Is this detailed enough or do you feel that this could be further supplemented?

In addition do we yet have an agenda for the kick off meeting? I currently have this from emails:

"'I'm thinking a morning (9.00 a.m.-12.30 p.m.) plus lunch (12.30-13.30) together might be ideal. For facilitators who are interested we might put a couple of the volumes of the HCA records, including the records we are going to work on, in the conference room, or in a side room, which we could then examine after lunch, and I might run a palaeography teach-in from 14.00 through to 16.00 for any of the facilitators who are interested (if TNA has a palaeography expert who could join us all the better)."

I would suggest key parts of the day to be:
Establishing and confirming end goals of the project.

Running through the schedule and establishing/confirming targets.

Perhaps going through the training wiki and some examples using a projector so we can discuss pros and cons.

Possibly dividing up associates amongst facilitators.

Some time spent addressing Palaeography policy. (I wonder whether this is something we need to have quite an in depth conversation about and that the meeting at TNA might be a good forum for it)

Some hands on time with the HCA records and some palaeography teaching. This could be linked to the above.

Simply getting to know each other!

What is your current position on the agenda for that meeting?

I must admit in IT terms I am not particularly proficient but I have spent a little bit of time today looking at how to set up an RSS feed, a calendar which we could put on the wiki which we could all edit and a forum. I'm still a bit mystified but I should imagine this will be easier once I have access to the wiki so that I can get working on it and trying things.

I completely agree re: the concentric circle style with links for displaying the team structure, I will send an email to Giovanni Colavizza and Patrizia to talk to them about the code for this.

In terms of wiki training I think this will be pretty easy to copy and paste from the descriptions you've provided in your wiki and possibly these explanations here: http://wikispot.org/Help_with_Editing .
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==Advisors comments==

[[Comments(Comments for the editors)]]
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''2012-08-09 07:01:45'' [[nbsp]] I have circulated a short email this morning to the MarineLives project advisors asking for their comments on the skeleton project manual with substantive suggestions. I have requested that their comments should be posted to the Editors' Page, rather than circulated by email. --[[Users/ColinGreenstreet|Users/ColinGreenstreet]]
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''2012-08-09 15:08:59'' [[nbsp]] Hello Everyone,

At present I am in the process of drawing up a draft of the transcription conventions that the project might consider adopting. The main issue I am having at this point is that I am still waiting for interlibrary loan to get hold of a copy of Dr. Murphy's book.

Regarding the training seminar at TNA, if there is a paleography expert there, it would be a good thing to consult with him/her beforehand and perhaps go over the transcription conventions that you will be teaching. I'm assuming that participants will have images of HCA documents to work with and will be able to get some practice that way. Would it be possible to draw up a sample alphabet and abbreviations/contractions based on images of letter forms found in the documents themselves? Would it also be possible to record parts of the training seminar and post it to the website for those who are not able to participate on the 20th? All three of the paleography tutorial links already posted to the website will be a huge help once things get started. Just some thoughts...

Charlene --[[Users/charleneeska|Users/charleneeska]]
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''2012-08-09 16:57:22'' [[nbsp]] In answer to Charlene's points and making a couple of my own:

(1) Jo Pugh is making contact with TNA palaeography experts and is checking who might be available. Jo is currently on holiday, but back in the office at Kew on Tuesday, 14th August. I will contact him on the Tuesday to get the name of the suggested palaeographer at TNA, and then I suggest that Charlene and I, together with William and Sarah have a web chat about how to run the palaography session on 20th August, and also in the w/c 3rd September, when we kickoff with project associates.

(2) I just spent half the day with a year thirteen student, [[Colin%27s Page#head-a568e2b0c6f34ac45ed32e9cb21779b66d1c68b7|Daniel Richards]], at the TNA in Kew, showing him HCA documents from 1656-1678, and it reminded me that we will need to be efficient in taking people, some of them who have never sat down an read an original document, and getting them to a decent level of confidence and productivity. By the way Daniel tells me that he wants to join the team, so (when he confirms officially), we have a second school involved, the well known comprehensive school, the London Oratory, in West London.

(3) We can easily provide digital images of relevant documents, and I was proposing that we are very concentrated on HCA documents, and the type of scripts and language that we will all be encountering over the next fourteen weeks. No need to learn Elizabethan or early Jacobean scripts. I think it is a good idea to do close ups of specific letters and the varianc eyou can see around them. I have probably five hundred digital images of HCA documents already on my laptop, and will start to go through a few for different script types and to experiment with enlarging letters and words. I'll post some examples to the palaography section of this wiki, so that people can comment on the effectiveness of this approach.

(4) We can certainly video or otherwise record parts of the palaeography session, and post the recording, probably best done as short thematic clips, to the wiki or website (need to check technical side for this, but Giovanni Colavizza can help us here. I'll add Giovanni to the current users of the wiki) --[[Users/ColinGreenstreet|Users/ColinGreenstreet]]
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''2012-08-10 02:37:06'' [[nbsp]] I am learning my way around the wiki, so inadvertently added my report on soliciting volunteers to [[Colin's page|Colin's page]]. Let me know if I should change that! Otherwise, I'm impressed by what I've read so far. -- Margaret --[[Users/margaretschotte|Users/margaretschotte]]

Team Members

2012-08-10T01:33:23Z

Margaretschotte:

'''Team Members'''

'''Editorial history'''

08/08/12: XXX, created new page
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'''CLICK ON TALK BUTTON IN MENU BAR ABOVE TO SEE COMMENTS BY OTHERS AND TO ADD YOUR OWN, IF YOU DON'T WANT THEM ON THE MAIN PAGE.'''

Talk pages can be created for any MarineLives Project Manual Page, and are a good way to have an editorial discussion about a page, without necessarily changing the page itself
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__TOC__
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== Project Leader ==

Colin Greenstreet
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== Project Advisors ==

Dr Charlene Eska (assistant professor, linguistics/palaeography - Virginia Tech, US)

Jo Pugh, Representative from the National Archives.

Margaret Schotte (PhD candidate, C17th & C18th history of marine science - Princeton, US) mschotte@princeton.edu
language skills: French, Dutch, German

Richard Blakemore (PhD candidate, C17th marine history - Selwyn, Cambridge) rjb207@cam.ac.uk

Dr Stuart Dunn (Lecturer, digital humanities - King's College, London)

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== Facilitators (looking to recruit 2 or 3 more) ==

Colin Greenstreet colin.greenstreet@googlemail.com

Jill Wilcox (religious studies secondary school teacher, BA in history (Hertfordshire), interest in family history, palaeography skills)

Sarah Laseke (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford) s.laseke@hotmail.com

William Tullett (Kings College London) wrtullett@gmail.com

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== Project Associates (looking to recruit 10-15 more) ==

Alex Calvo (oriental language training at undergraduate (SOAS), MA, has done some university teaching as an academic; currently in Taiwan, but will visit London on 29th August) (alex_calvo_2@yahoo.co.uk)

Angus Gorrie (Westminster School) (angus.gorrie@westminster.org.uk)

Charlotte Mackenzie (Nottingham University, 3rd year history undergraduate) (bella_mack@hotmail.co.uk)

Emma Hardy (Nottingham University, 3rd year history undergraduate) (ahyeh@nottingham.ac.uk)

Gordon O'Sullivan (Trinity College, Dublin, MA, Digital Humanities - submission start September 2012, ?late 30s or early 40s, experienced historian and writer) (osullivangordon@yahoo.co.uk)

Ida Sjoberg (Westminster School) (ida.sjoberg@westminster.org.uk)

Jerome Mockett (Westminster School) (jerome.mockett@westminster.org.uk)

Marta Rezzano (Nottingham University, 3rd year history undergraduate) (ahymr@nottingham.ac.uk)

Tommy Walters (Westminster School) (tommy.walters@westminster.org.uk)