Hi there Adrienne,

Eeek transcription. As a researcher working on a large collection of
conversational transcripts that also includes numerical data, I think
I can suggest a couple of things to you! I'm no computer expert
though...I'm just speaking from my own experience of these programs
and the advice of our technology staff.

Excel is good for numerical things. You can create tables and graphs
quite easily from it too, but it's not as good with text. Word has no
great way of showing you the results of searches. It sounds like you
want a database program (i.e. filemaker pro), but my experience with
those kinds of programs is limited---I think they work really well,
but I didn't have the time, energy, patience, to figure out how to
create the right kind of database. If you have a computer guru to
help you set it up--this kind of program would be your best bet I
think--but you have to be prepared to put a lot of time in at the
beginning.

Good luck! I'd love to hear how other people have dealt with similar problems.

Karen Knutson
Museum Learning Collaborative
University of Pittsburgh
http://www.museumlearning.com
[log in to unmask]


>Hello everyone,
>
>I am preparing to do a large transcribing project for my museum but have
>never really done anything to this extent before and I am hoping that those
>of you out there with transcribing experience may be able to help me and
>answer a few questions I have or atleast send me in the right direction for
>answers.
>
>First of all, most of what I will be transcribing are ledgers.  Does anyone
>have suggestions as to what are the best computer programs to use for
>transcribing such things?  We have been considering Microsoft Excel and
>Word.  Of the two, we decided Word would be the easiest to use but I'm not
>sure that it would be the best.
>
>Secondly, after the books are transcribed, my director would like to be
>able to do searches for terms found in the ledgers that bring up various
>fields of information associated with that term in that sentance,
>paragraph, etc. that she can print out with out having to print out the
>whole page of the ledger.   For example, if you were to do a search for the
>term "corn" she would like it to not only list what page that term can be
>found on, but also any dates, amounts (2 bushels, etc.), names, etc.
>associated with that term and be able to print out just the search
>results.  Is this possible with Word?  Is it at all possible with any
>program out there?
>
>Any advice, suggestions, or help you can give is greatly
>appreciated.  Thanks in advance, Adrienne Marrah-Program Assistant for
>Museum Program and Studies.
>
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The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

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