I'm involved in a funded project called Purposeful gaming and BHL: engaging the public in improving and enhancing access to digital texts http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Purposeful+Gaming More info about the project can be found at the URL provided, but the core of the project is that a game will be developed to allow players to correct words in scanned texts that the computer using optical character recognition software (OCR) did not recognize correctly. If the error rate is above a certain threshold on a page, the whole page will be transcribed by users. In addition, users are invited to transcribe handwritten text, which is usually not recognizable by OCR software. An example is the hand written field notes of William Brewster (1851-1919), http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/61138#/summary .
Here is how you can help: Earlier in the month, the Purposeful Gaming team launched ten digitized volumes of William Brewster's field notes on two crowdsourcing transcription websites: Biodiversity Volunteer Portal (BVP) Biodiversity Volunteer Portal (BVP)<http://volunteer.ala.org.au/>, a collaboration between the Australian Museum and the Atlas of Living Australia; FromThePage http://transcribebhl.mobot.org/ , a transcription tool developed by Ben Brumfield. Try your hand at transcribing Brewster's fascinating field notes on either site and enjoy his idyllic writing while helping to unlock his valuable observations for the benefit of all! Learn more: http://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2014/06/transcribing-field-notes-of-william.html Following transcription Brewster's field notes will not only be available for viewing on the Biodiversity Heritage Library site http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/61138#/summary , but will also be searchable. The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries<http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/BHL+Consortium+Membership> that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections<http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Collection+Development+Policy> and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global "biodiversity commons." I'd be happy to field any questions that might come up and have fun unlocking the field notes of a leading American ornithologist. Best, Marty ======================================================================== Marty Schlabach m...@cornell.edu<mailto:m...@cornell.edu> Food & Agriculture Librarian, Mann Library, Ithaca 607-255-6919 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 Cell 315-521-4315 ======================================================================== -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
