Archives hide a lot of stories when they are tucked safely away in boxes and shelves. We at the Museum of University History felt much closer to revealing all these stories because of a fruitful cooperation with The Special Collections and Digitisation Team. They had organised the archive of the old Astronomical Observatory at the University of Oslo and digitised the collection of academic correspondence of the first Professor of Astronomy, Christopher Hansteen (1784-1873). All of them are published on the platform Alvin (Alvin – Observatoriesamlingene). This obviously makes the contents of the letters much more available, both for us at the museum, for the university, other stakeholders in Norway and globally. But one barrier is still there: The handwriting. It takes a lot of effort to get used to the chicken scrawl of the different men Hansteen corresponded with.
An initiative from Annika Rockenberger, leader for digital research methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University Library, brought a solution to this challenge. She suggested that she could arrange a “transcribathon” on selected parts of the collection. We had no idea what she was talking about, but she explained the content of a transcribathon and how to get there: In short, we select letters we would like to have transcribed, Transkribus, a web-based tool for handwritten text recognition, transcribes them, and the next step is the transcribathon, where we invite people to correct the transcribed letters. One great outcome is that we can publish transcribed letters, and another great outcome is that other interested people and we will learn how to use Transkribus.
Preparing The Incompetent
It turned out that one thing is to know that Trancribus exists out there, doing its magic tricks, and another thing is to actually understand how it works and to understand what we, or humans, have to do before we have a transcribed letter where a user can find information using a search tool. This was approximately the process:
- Annika explains what is gained with a transcribathon. We are enthusiastic and eager to do this.
- Annika explains (very patiently) how Transkribus works
- We try to use Transkribus
- Annika explains (very patiently) how Transkribus works, once again
- We select letters for the transcribathon, by this logic: Letters from people in Germany that we knew were influential for Hansteen, and letters from Swedish colleagues. It was important to have text to work with for those of us who aren’t fluent in German
- The letters were harvested from Alvin by Line Nybakk Akerholt at the library and turned into PDFs
- The workshop was a public event, organised by the library. We invited people to join from our different networks: People interested in the history of science, the staff in charge of the educational program at the university and archivists at the university. Our colleagues at the library invited people in their networks.
A Good Day To Transcribe
On Thursday, October 23rd, we turned up eager to work at The Humanities and Social Sciences Library. The event was more popular than we had dared to hope, and we were approximately 20 voluntary hackathonians. First, Annika explained (very patiently) how Transkribus works. Then we sorted out the German-speaking participants, so they could work together. The two remaining tables got one Swedish letter-writer per table. We soon found out why Annika made sure that we sat together with the other people working on the collection. The tables worked as colloquium groups from the first minute until we had to stop at the end of the day.
What Did We Learn From This Experience?
- People who used to old letters as archive material love to engage with the stories that unfold. But it makes you happy to work together with other people absorbed with letters from the same person! In a reading room, you have no one to tell all the stories to, but in a transcribathon, we could share what we found with people who wanted to listen! The men writing the letters are sharing details about sickness, worries, slander and grief in between the facts or questions that made them send a letter. It takes about 5 minutes to feel a connection with the person who held the pen.
- We found out that we should have checked how easy it was to understand the handwriting before we started to work with the collections. The poor people at the German table got the letters of an instrument maker working with Gauss in Göttingen. We hoped the letters would give us loads of new insights into how Hansteen established his magnetic observatory, but with difficult handwriting and a very specific terminology, the task became difficult, and people were understandably frustrated.
- We started to realise what Annika had tried to teach us – that Transkribus doesn’t think like a human. This was obvious where the letter writer had crossed out some words and written something else between the lines.
- We also understood that even if Transkribus feels like magic, and we just correct the transcribed letters, it is still a lot of work, in more than one way.
- Now that we know how to correct the transcribed letters, we can work with the material on our own, without a mentor at hand.
The transcribathon was more popular than we had anticipated, and people asked us if we could arrange this again. This really made us happy. When you work with some very specialised material, it’s easy to think that this is for the few. But to read letters together and experience that archival work doesn’t have to be an introvert activity gave new insights. The day was concluded with a promise from the library to arrange a new transcribathon, or half transcribathon, for half a day, as well as an intention to make the transcribed letters available and searchable on the Alvin platform, linked to the digitised letters.
We at the museum are so grateful for everyone who joined us on the day with all their enthusiasm and knowledge, and of course, we are very grateful for the cooperation with the University Library.





