When transcribing you will see that it can be a time-consuming job. Sometimes it can be frustrating, but it is usually very rewarding. However, one very important thing to remember is that you will be transcribing using online software. For this reason it is very important to save your work often. We suggest at least every five minutes. This is because the more often you save, the less of your work you will lose if there should be a problem with the internet connection either your end or where Textual Communities is based, as well as several other technical issues that could cause you to lose your work. If you do not save often enough, if anything were to happen like that, you would lose a lot of time, work and effort. So make sure you press save!

The save button is at the bottom of the transcription box.

If the button is now showing up in black, but in light grey, and you cannot click on it, like this: cant save.png

it means the folio you are working on has not been assigned to you. It may be assigned to another transcriber. To avoid transcribers duplicating work, you can only save work done on the folios assigned to you. If you notice you cannot press save do not continue to work on that folio as any work you do will be lost. If you think you should have been assigned a particular folio but you cannot press save on it then you should email a.m.m.ward@bham.ac.uk to explain and hopefully rectify the problem.

Every time you press save Textual Communities saves a new version of the transcription. It does not overwrite the previous version. This means that in the event of an error it is possible to view previous versions of the transcription.

If you save your work and come back to it at a later time you must ensure you are working on the most recent version of the transcription. Do this by selecting the most recent version in the drop-down box at the top of the transcription box.

drop down box.png

This is the drop-down box. Clicking on the arrows will bring up a list of all the versions of the transcription, that is each time you pressed save. You will see the names of all the people who have edited the transcription. Only one transcriber is usually assigned a folio at a time, but sometimes your work may be checked by a proof-reader who is part of the Estoria team.

Choose the most recent version to continue working on your transcription where you left off:

drop down box versions.png