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Letter Transcription

November 18, 2016 by Jingya Wu

This is the first time for me to actually read and even to transcribe a manuscript. As a non-native English speaker, it is particular difficult for me to understand the writings. For instance, when I don’t know a word, there is no way for me to figure out the handwriting version of that word. This happened very frequently when my group was doing the first transcription together. In addition, there are many person names and place names, which made the process even harder and more frustrating. During the group transcription, I relied a lot on the other group members, and was obviously slower than how they were moving forward. When I tried to do my own transcription, I had to look back to the transcribed letter that my group did in class and compare to the manuscript to see how he wrote each letter. It was such a pain and thus I decided to use a letter transcribed by Professor Jakacki. The mark-up process was so much better. It helped me a lot to better understand the letter and his writing style, and thus was very helpful for me to understand his experience during the war.

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Being in the Archives changed my first impression on these manuscripts. When I first saw those digital manuscripts, the first word that came to my mind was messy, and I didn’t find their handwritings beautiful at all. However, when I actually got to hold the real letter, I was really surprised by the quality of Merrill’s handwriting. The texture of the paper was decent, and the cursive handwriting was extremely beautiful. I would be way less frustrated with the transcription assignment if I was using the real letter. For me, the real letter is a lot cleaner and easier to read. However, it is not possible to give everyone access to all manuscripts. Therefore, digital copies are necessary to spread the information. If I did not have access to the paper copy, I will try to look for different versions of the digital copy online, since light and scanning technology can really affect the quality of a digital copy.

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In Merrill’s letter, he mentioned that he had a cold which was affecting him a lot. While I was reading Merrill’s journal, I found that he caught the cold on the 25th, which is two days before he wrote the letter. The cold lasted for 4 days. In addition, I also noticed that when he was writing to himself, he included a lot more details than he wrote to others. For example, he mentioned the moss that he picked up when he first landed at Slocum creek in both the letter and his journal of the day. However, in the journal he included a lot more description about the moss, as well as the underlying meaning of this moss — his first encounter with the place.

The Linn Letter Process

November 18, 2016 by Dale Hartman

All of the transcription we have done in this unit has been very much a collaborative effort. From the very first transcription activity we did, there wouldn’t have been much progress made had we been working alone and isolated. More sets of eyes looking at a single line is one of the best ways to speed up the transcription process. A lot of words can be recognized with just a simple look-over, but some words are more challenging to interpret. The best method I’ve found for these words is to go through one character at a time and try to compare and transcribe each letter. Generally, these problematic words arise when the start or the end of a word are hard to read, so getting the other part and making an educated guess is also a valid strategy.

The document transcribed from and the end result text marked up in TEI

There were a number of advantages to working with the actual documents in the Bucknell Archives. The simple black and white scans we were using as the source of our transcriptions lost a lot of details that were in the original letters. For instance, one word that was giving me trouble in the scanned document was something that looked like it should have been ‘had,’ but had way too many lines to be those three letters. When I finally got to look at that part of the document in the archive, it became apparent that the word was indeed ‘had,’ but Linn had originally written ‘were’ there first, and changed the word to ‘had’ by writing over it. This intricacy was lost in the monochrome black scan we were originally working with. However, the processing that went into creating the digital scan did help to pull better information than the human eye could. It’s easy to see bleed-through on the physical document, which made some words harder to read. However, in the scan, this bleed-through was filtered out.

Here is the word in question, hard to decipher in the scan but easily understood when looking at the actual document.

A lot of what Linn writes about in the March 2nd letter and journal entry are the same, the visit from Morris, learning of the occupation of Nashville, Memphis, and Savannah, etc. He even describes these events in nearly the exact same words in both the letter and the journal. However, in his journal, he noted that the instructions from Morris were against army orders. This is not something he notified his brother of. He also spent more time in his journal complaining about the little irritations of everyday life (poor weather, broken kitchen equipment). In his letter home, he spent more time discussing the state of the war and world overall, talking about US relations with the Rebels, England, and Mexico.

“Marking up Linn” experience

November 18, 2016 by Tong Tong

Transcription is the most painful part when I was working on this module. I am very aware how one’s handwriting may include important clues about his/her identity and the situation in which he/she writes. For example, since I haven’t written much English by hand and have not deliberately practiced my calligraphy, it’s easy to tell that I’m a non-native speaking (or writing) person. Therefore, personally I would always prefer to type English and to read printed English articles in order to “conceal my identity” to some extent.

tong_markup — This is a screenshot of my mark-up. You can see that there are many “[?]” and “[…]” which really shows my frustration

tong_pic1 — This is the letter that I transcribed

Since I haven’t read many hand-written manuscripts, I struggled for a long time with the possible spellings and even in the final version, I still have many words unrecognized. When doing transcription, I at first recorded all the letters I could recognize and based on the length of the word, I could have several guesses on what the word might be. The next step would be looking for similar patterns and to decode the letters I didn’t recognize. I would also ask classmates for help; in fact, it would not be roughly finished without Sarah’s help. It is a very frustrating experience and makes me really grateful for the efforts people invest in transforming the manuscripts to the typed paragraph online. If they have not been digitized at all, people like me will have no access to the text because 1) the manuscripts are preserved in certain archives that may not be publicly available and 2) even we can see the picture, we can’t really read it. Therefore, my struggle with transcription also indicates the significance of digital archives and digitized texts.

I work in the special collection/university archive after class, so I’m already familiar with the environment there. Taking a close look to the manuscripts is an important experience, and as Yash suggested in class, the actual paper would give the reader a better overview of the content, while pictures online usually compromised the fluidity of the text as a whole. In some cases, there are some scratches that are only manifest in paper, and the paper’s material is usually absent in pictures as well. For example, I didn’t expect the letters to be so thin and fragile. Though I don’t know what’s the importance of the materiality of the letters yet, but it is possible that the material also carries certain traits of the environment and even of the history.

One thing I noticed by comparing the journal and the letter is that, James Merill Linn is definitely (encouraged to) take the readers’ reaction into account. His brother’s letter on April 2nd is almost solely about people’s reaction to JML’s writing. I assume that readers’ response is important in directing how he should render his life in the writing, and what the readers expect to read and are enthusiastic about. JML mostly talked bout New Berne from March 12th to 24th, and it’s interesting that on April 17th he again mentioned New Berne. One possible guess is that after knowing audience’ response to New Berne, JML feels the necessity to talk more about it.

TEI with JML <3

November 18, 2016 by Sarah Rosecky

Every time I work on TEI, I find something new to challenge me. I worked with TEI, and, specifically, James Merrill Linn two years ago during my first year at Bucknell. As a beginner in all aspects of the digital world, I was scared by the concept of TEI. What is it? What does it do? Honestly, until now I have realized the importance of transcription and text analysis. Over two hundred years ago, there was a man from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania writing from a ship in the Atlantic back to his hometown. James Merrill Linn fought for this country, so I feel a great need respect and honor him and his work through my dedication to this project. In order to do a successful job on an assignment like this, one needs to learn correct transcription skills and semantic markup.

screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-7-14-24-pm — Smudgy handwriting

There are multiple reasons that make Linn’s letters hard to read. The first is that these letters were written in the 1860s; the language and style of writing is not so prevalent today. The second is that after over 150 years, the ink and quality of the papers starts to deteriorate. While the Bucknell archives do a great job conserving these artifacts, it naturally happens. On my particular letter, on March 5, from Linn to his father, or Papa as he calls him, there was a large section that had smudged. It was on the bottom right corner of the letter, and it was illegible to read some of the handwriting. Another thing to note is that Linn tends to use patterns in his writing, i.e., the ampersand, but I could not justify what these words were.

Something else that was very useful to us was the use of the Bucknell archives. I was able to see much more clearly his handwriting when it was in front of my own eyes rather than a computer screen. I actually loved using the magnifying glass to see his handwriting. It is amazing how Linn actually had written and touched those letters during the civil war!

After the original transcription, we marked up the text using TEI. This gives the letter some semantic meaning. People, places, events, etc. are categorized according to the critical judgments of the specific TEI editor. For example, is a ship a placeName or a objectType? I will always argue that it is a place Name, because Linn writes from it. The letters will be cited from the Cossack, which is a ship that Linn occupied during the war. He resided in this ship; therefore, I think it is a p

screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-7-14-41-pm — Linn writing from Cossack

lace. Others may not feel the same way, and they may want to mark this as a objectType; this is why TEI can create some lively discussions. It is somewhat subjective. Also, when Linn writes to his family, he tends to write differently than if he is writing for himself or the Lewisburg chronicle. If he is writing to his father, he will talk about his well-being, while, if he is writing to his brother, he will talk about sending home guns. If Linn is writing for himself or the Lewisburg chronicle, he seems to write more formally about events; he knows there may be a bigger audience, which may be why his writings become more objective.

Once the TEI markup was completed, we transformed it into an HTML format to be able to publish it digitally. This is a part where I struggled, because I am not as familiar with HTML as I would have liked. It was confusing to me how this worked and why it had to be done the way it was. Ultimately, I am satisfied with the end results of Module 3, because I know, or hope, James Merrill Linn would be proud.

James Merill Linn: the No-Nonsense Weatherman

November 17, 2016 by Maureen Maclean

I have had experience with transcription before but the Linn letters proved to be quite a challenge for me. I had worked on transcription of print material but I did not expect handwriting would be so hard to transcribe. I referred to the transcribed letters we worked on in class in our groups when I was transcribing my letter. I asked people around me what they thought a word was and Prof. Jakacki helped a lot. To make sure I got the spelling of a person’s name right, I looked at the journal and checked. I found that it was easier for me to transcribe if I didn’t look so close up at a word. I actually found that the shorter the word, the harder it was for me to understand/transcribe it. For example, I had that “over” was actually “own” until Prof. Jakacki helped me. However, I had no problem recognizing “acknowledge.”

Side by side comparison of digital version and my xml markup

My first thought when I saw the real life letter was how small the handwriting/letter was. In retrospect, it makes sense as he had to save paper and ink. I didn’t find the real life document to be easier or harder to read than the digital facsimile. There are trade-offs of working with a digital facsimile instead of a real relic. One being that you lose a certain context of the writing. For example, you also lose a certain perspective or sympathy of the author when using a digital copy. With a real life document you get to hold, touch, smell, and etc. as the author would. When holding the Linn letter I kept on imagining myself as Linn writing amidst soldiers at New Bern and looking out at the sunset. With a digital copy, you lose that rich experience. Another reason why its important to have access to the original material is if the digital reproduction is poor. Luckily mine was okay but I know a couple of students had trouble with their digital copies.

That being said, digital facsimiles are helpful because you can resize them, take notes, print them out- where ever and when ever you want. However, using both a digital and original copy are ideal because it provides a rich context (original) while allowing a manipulation of the text (digital). If you only have access to a digital copy you can call the university or organization that has the original and discuss viewing options or access to their mark up or transcriptions. You could talk with an archivist who specializes in the Linn letters or in a particular letter and ask them your questions. You could also research about publications, papers, and projects that have involved the letters and refer to them for transcription help and see if they have good photos of the letter.

Can you find a pattern of expression, emotion, or experience that is the same or different (remember audience – when Linn writes for himself, does he reveal things that are different from when he writes to someone?)

My letter was interesting because in most of James Merill Linn’s letters he does not talk directly to his audience. In terms of content, my letter was straightforward: James wanted John to give money to the listed people, many of whom appear in other letters, such as Beaver. He doesn’t talk about his day at all and just gives John directions to hand out the money he sent with the letter and he asks John to send him back a receipt of the transactions. In Linn’s diary before my letter was dated, he was similarly straightforward but did not address an audience and just talks about the events in his day. He talks about mundane things in his day like the weather or receiving mail- there is not a lot of emotion in the immediate diary entries before the letter. However, farther back (around April 3-6th) Linn wrote in great detail. For example, on April 6th he wrote a lot about the beauty of the town and the surroundings. For example he remarks “There are many fine houses, but the beauty of them is in the large grounds around them and the shrubbery. Roses are blooming, & the lilac & locust are out.” He also laments, throughout his time at New Bern, about how nice the town must have been in the past. He seems generally interested in the history of the place throughout his diaries. Regardless of the unfortunate events around him, he seems to find solace in the beauty of his surroundings and the little things in life (he REALLY likes the weather) and seems to be optimistic. In terms of context, my letter fits into the previous diary entries because James talks about the paymaster- which James wrote about in his diary a couple days before. It also seems as if he had a fair amount of down time at Camp Franklin.

For a short time after my letter, he continues to write sparingly and in a cut and dry manner. He writes about troop movements and his daily military interactions. He also talks about getting sick and is relieved to find out that it isn’t small pox. It is strange that James did not talk about his letter to John in his April 13th entry, since he seems to recount his day so meticulously in his diary. Compared to the diary entries before the letter, the diary entries after have a more sober and anxious tone. This is probably because his unit had learned about the Battle of Corinth and because James was sick and thought he might have small pox. Linn writes less about nice strolls or the beautiful sunset. This makes sense as he was sick and the Union Army had to regroup and reorganize after Corinth.

The general difference between the Linn letter and his diary entries are that in the letter Linn doesn’t waste any time talking about himself or his day- he instead just asks his brother to give money to these people without explaining why. I don’t think he was so frank because he was busy or in a hurry because his hand writing was neat and according to his diary, he had some down time. It’s interesting that he doesn’t share much with his brother while he does go into detail in his diary. Perhaps this is because what Linn was saying is classified information or because the brothers’ relationship wasn’t super warm/close , or maybe they were in contact all the time and would talk about the stuff in the diaries in a different letter. In terms of my own relationship with my sisters, I often find myself only texting them when I have a specific question or thing for them to do for me. In that aspect I can relate to the straight forward letter to John. However, I can also see how it might be dangerous to write about how Gen. Burnside was anxious or the movement of Union troops over the mail.

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