Europeana Launching a New Transcription Tool & New “Transcribathon Competitions”

From Europeana:

We are happy to announce the launch of the recently developed Europeana 1914-1918 transcription tool at the upcoming AGM in Riga. Here the tool will be introduced along with the new concept of Transcribathon competitions.
A Transcribathon is a competition where teams compete with each other to transcribe handwritten texts online. Each team works together on the transcription of a source from Europeana 1914-1918 (for example a diary). A jury will award points for the quantity and quality of the transcription and the presentation of the result, with a prize awarded to the winning team.
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Over the past five years, Europeana 1914-1918 has assembled almost 200,000 digital documents from all parts of Europe, ranging from postcards and uniforms to jewellery and sketchbooks. These items are only available and the metadata is relatively limited. The texts are predominantly handwritten and indexed by a summary description and keywords. Until now, users have only been able to decipher the texts of the diaries, field post cards and certificates by sight.
In order to make better use of these documents a new transcription tool will be introduced: www.transcribathon.eu
The idea behind the tool is to utilise the sources in a better way by deciphering and transcribing the texts and linking them to an image. In this way, they can be effectively used for education, research and publications.

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