transcription/docs/Intent.md

Historical Document Transcription Design Intent

I have several thousand pages of family history told through letters, postcards, books, and other documents that I want to transcribe to text.

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Goals

1. Preserve our family history
2. Unburden my family (and descendants) from having to store and care for the physical media. Once the documents have been transcribed and organized, they can be donated (or kept by a family member that wants to retain them).
3. Make the text easily available and searchable by family members, as well as AI (which may have different requirements).
4. Ability create timelines or assemble the historical record of the family or specific individuals from across the complete document archive. Perhaps use AI to create the timelines in a more narrative form.

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Source material

1. letters, cards, diaries - handwritten; mostly stored in tubs, with little organization
2. books - typed or typeset; mostly self-published books 50-100 pages in length. This may be expanded to include selected pages from other publications.
3. newspaper clippings, event programs, invitations, and other ephemera

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Methodology

1. Follow current best practices per "A Guide to Documentary Editing" by Mary-Jo Kline. (See Transcription Methodology)