Quick checklist for hosts
- Arrive about 5 minutes before your shift starts at the transcribing station on the first floor of Raynor Library
- Hosts should bring a laptop with them.
Event-specific pages to open on your laptop
Welcome would-be transcribers:
- Ask everyone to sign in: first and last name, email, MU affiliation (student, faculty, staff), and reasons for attending (i.e., class, club, personal interest)
- Ask what brings them to the transcribe-a-thon.
- Some students may be attending for extra credit in a particular class. If so, find out what kind of documentation they need (e.g., selfie, email from hosts) and help provide it.
- Note: Ott tutors do not use their personal email accounts for Ott business. If they need to send email documentation of participation, they can forward relevant info (i.e., student name, faculty name, faculty email, course, time of participation) to writingcenter@marquette.edu and reception will take it from there.
- Find out if would-be transcribers have participated before or are new:
- For returning transcribers: Chat briefly about past experiences
- For new transcribers: Welcome them and let them know transcribing is fun, easy, and really interesting (e.g., as a form of highly interactive reading, as a way to learn new things)
- For all transcribers, offer a quick intro to this year’s focus, Mary Ann Shadd Cary. In brief, Shadd Cary was newspaper editor/publisher, a civil rights activist, educator, lawyer, and Union recruiter during the Civil War.
- Segue to transcribing by suggesting transcribers watch a brief video about the transcribing: https://youtu.be/5Gt0NHi9wrU (this video is about last year's project, the Colored Conventions; look for new updated video)
- Then share this link to the transcription site, which will also be on the half-page cheat-sheet: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/douglassday/transcribe-shadd-cary
Additional notes:
Chatting while transcribing is welcome and encouraged! Often, transcribers can wind up working on the same item/document and help each other with any tricky choices that come up. Everyone is welcome to take pictures, including selfies to document participation and screenshots of their work.