Transcribing required knowing what was being asked for, which could be difficult when different forms were used, as shown in these two forms

For this week, I worked on the Zooniverse Project Every Name Counts. I specifically chose to transcribe in the subheading “BASIC Names Auschwitz – Prisoner Registration Forms,” because I recognized the name of the concentration camp, and having that history made me connect more to the work I was doing. I immediately ran into the problem that I do not speak German, which meant that I had to click on the “Need some help with this task?” button for every single question – usually multiple times. The first transcription was especially difficult, because in transcribing relatives I couldn’t figure out that parents were listed together on one line. Once I finished the first document, and understood the process better, I had a much easier time. After this, the process of transcribing the names weighed on me, knowing the suffering these people underwent. I learned that I learned that Motek is a name, and also a term of endearment in Hebrew, and transcribed a record for an 18-year-old who was imprisoned with his parents. I also transcribed the record of a married carpenter who died three months after his date of entry. Knowing these facts about Roman Kolanola’s life make me remember his name – and helped me understand the importance of the Every Name Counts database.

“Motek” is a Hebrew Endearment, as I learned in researching this project

Franz Gemza’s parents had crosses over their names, marking their deaths

Roman Kolanola’s death date was shown on his form

Participating in this Digital Humanities Project gave me a deeper understanding of what the subject means. When I read in the instructions that each item is transcribed three times to keep mistakes from slipping through, I understood Kirschenbaum’s words: “digital humanities is also a social undertaking” (Kirschenbaum 2). I also understood “The Bentham Project” more after performing transcription myself, since I did not understand how crowd-sourced transcription could work when I first heard of it (Ross 29). I found the tagging feature at the end of the Zooniverse project to be very interesting, and it struck me as something users of this database in the future will find very useful. Perhaps I found this intuitively important because of tagging’s prevalence of Twitter and other social medias, as discussed in both of the readings for this week (Kirschenbaum 4, Ross 33-35). I was glad to be able to participate in a Digital Humanities project, and help digitize these important records

Works Cited

Kirschenbaum, Michael G. “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin, no. 150 (2010): 1–7.

Ross, Claire. “Social Media for Digital Humanities and Community Engagement.” In Digital Humanities in Practice, by Claire Warwick, Melissa M. Terras, and Julianne Nyhan, 23–45. London: Facet Publishing, 2012. https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.libproxy.chapman.edu/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=5322476a-83c0-4a5d-a546-0dd1c3ab2a02%40pdc-v-sessmgr04&ppid=pp_23&vid=0&format=EB.