Joining the Team

The work involved in this project is split into two pieces. First, a transcriptionist (person on the transcription team) takes the original recording and, following the project guide, converts it into a formatted text representation of the session. Second, a quality auditor (person on the QA team) listens to the original recording, following along on the transcript and making note of any discrepencies they find. Once the transcript is complete and has been checked at least twice (once by the transcriptionist and once by the quality auditor), it is posted for public access.

You are welcome to join the transcription team or the QA team; both consist entirely of volunteers who find the content of OLS interesting and wish it to be available to a broader audience. Before offering your time to this project, we ask that you consider the commitment involved. Both transcription and quality assurance work require a considerable amount of time (production of a single session transcript may take as much as ten hours of time) and an eye for detail.

It should also be noted that the audio recordings (required for both transcription and QA work on this project), are quite large; most exceed 30 megabytes. If you are not on a high-speed Internet connection, or if you have metered Internet service, this is probably not a project you should consider.

Transcription

If you feel you wish to accept the challenges of transcription, please read the guide to transcription for this project. Once ready to begin, examine the status page and select a session which has not yet been transcribed (and is not already underway). Please post a note to the workers list, stating your name, preferred e-mail address, and the session you have selected for transcription. You may "claim" only one session at a time. The workers list is located at: olstrans-work@lists.sourceforge.net Once your posting has been received, the project administrator will update the status list and team list to represent your selected task.

Quality Assurance

If you wish to join the quality assurance team as an auditor, please read the guide to transcription and our description of bugs for this project. Please be thorough in your efforts. Once ready to begin, examine the status page and select a session which has a transcript, but has not yet been audited. Please post a note to the workers list, stating your name, preferred e-mail address, and the session you have selected for auditing. You may "claim" only one session at a time. The workers list is located at: olstrans-work@lists.sourceforge.net Once your posting has been received, the project administrator will update the status page and team list to represent your selected task.

In the event that you should have questions or concerns regarding our project team, please feel free to contact the project administrator, Jacob Moorman.