Phase 1 Continues

Since late February, we have been downloading our completed XML files from the vendor and preparing them for proofreading. During this phase of work, the focus has been to check the accuracy of the transcriptions against the good old paper slips. After some hemming and hawing, our committee decided that paper-to-paper proofreading was still the best method, so we have run the XML files through an XSL transformation, producing a fresh paper copy that closely matches the original paper files. The major difference, of course, is that our new paper copies can fit about six records to a page. So, for the past six weeks (and continuing until it's done) several of us are spending the bulk of our time proofreading about 100,000 tiny slips of paper against about 20,000 larger pieces of paper. This stage, while tedious, is an important first step before the full encoding and data improvement.

For the project manager, sitting down with hundreds of records everyday has been enormously helpful in developing the full schema. After much discussion, investigation, and trial and error, the project committee decided to develop a home-grown schema. A full discussion of the evolution of the schema and its latest iteration will follow in the next post--stay tuned!