Alan Jackson was an inveterate collector of information on all aspects of the railways and recorded his data on a series of index cards. He left his collection of cards and supporting material to the Railway and Canal Historical Society and they have passed them to us at the National Railway Museum. The cards have been digitised and a team of volunteers is entering the hand written data into Excel spreadsheets. When this lengthy process is complete, the data will be transferred into the Museum’s systems, to form an invaluable archive, available to specialist and general users.
The Role
As one of our volunteers you’d receive batches of up to 50 digitised cards, together with a prepared spreadsheet and guidance notes on how to transcribe the information. Included with this is reference material to explain the codes Alan Jackson used. A digitised card looks like this:
and, when transcribed, the spreadsheet looks like this:
We need:
Many more transcribers, to help us move this project forward
Transcribers need:
- A computer with a good sized monitor, Windows 98 or later, and Microsoft Excel
- A broadband link to receive and transmit files
- Reasonable keyboard skills
- A willingness to sit at the computer for blocks of time, capturing data
…and some knowledge of railways can he helpful.
Does this project interest you? If so, you can find a simple application form here
Can Mac users take part?
Hopefully you can, contact our archive team direct on search.engine@nrm.org.uk and they will be able to help.
Yes, not a problem. Although you’d need to have access to a pdf reader and Microsoft Excel.
I signed up to this quite a while back (November 2013) – will I be getting some material thorough soon? Many Thanks, Liz
Hi Liz, we will check for you now.
Having received information on this through the SW Cricle, I have now posted the request for volunteers on HMRS, SEMG and GOG web sites. Hopefully we might get a few more helpers that way. Regards, Arthur
Thanks Arthur, you support is much appreciated.
All the best
Matt
Using Excel is not a good idea – it’s a proprietary product.
Better to use an open format such as ods which ‘everyone’ should have access to.
Thanks for your comments, David. I appreciate that not everyone will have access to Excel, but we tend to use it as it allows us to upload material into our collections database.
Thanks
Matt