All posts tagged with transcription

During 2020, the Archives team at Kew Gardens developed a collaboration with the University of Roehampton, the University of the Third Age (U3A), and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), to create a model for the archive sector, which uses volunteer-driven, remote methods to transcribe and research collections, making them easily shareable and accessible using TEI-XML encoding. We wanted to create ways in which TEI could be embedded in the archive sector and managed by archivists with little experience of textual encoding, or time to carry out encoding themselves. In creating this model, we would also digitise, transcribe, encode, and make accessible in BHL one of Kew’s most important, but inaccessible volumes – the Kew Record Book. For Kew, it was important that the volume would be made fully accessible, as part of our commitment to transparency around our history and involvement in colonialism.

The model we created was timely, as the COVID-19 pandemic meant many institutions could no longer accommodate volunteers on-site, and remote ways of working have persisted. The Travelling Plants project built a community and model of engaging with and developing the digital capacity of older people remotely, a sector of society that particularly felt the impact of social isolation during the pandemic.

Robert Alexander Gilbert (1870-1942) was a Black photographer interested in ornithology and chemistry who worked for ornithologist William Brewster from the mid 1890s until Brewster’s death in 1919 and at various tasks around the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University beyond 1919. He was an Associate of the American Ornithologists’ Union.

Gilbert was not officially recognized for his photographic work with William Brewster, although Brewster did not claim credit for all the images in his collection. It was assumed that Brewster took all the photographic prints bequeathed to the Ernst Mayr Library and Archives of the MCZ (EMLA) upon his death. However, while conducting research for a book, author John Hanson Mitchell, former editor of the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s (MAS) Sanctuary magazine, discovered over 2000 of Brewster’s glass plate negatives in the attic of a building owned by the MAS. One of the images in particular, a photograph of a young, well-attired Black man standing in front of a rustic cabin in the wilderness, captured his interest. Mitchell was curious as to the identity of this young man. Later, in the mid-1970s, Mitchell had a chance encounter with an Archives Assistant at the MCZ who suggested to him that all of Brewster’s photographs were, in fact, taken by Brewster’s assistant, a young Black man named Robert Gilbert. This piqued Mitchell’s interest and launched his journey to discover more about Gilbert.[1] The quest culminated with the publication in 2005 of Mitchell’s Looking for Mr. Gilbert: the Reimagined Life of an African American. In 2014 an e-book edition was published as well.

Mitchell’s publication helps provide new insight into Robert Gilbert’s life and work. Brewster’s journals and diaries, now digitally available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), are also valuable records attesting to Gilbert’s contributions in a variety of areas. While only a handful of Brewster’s photographs in the MCZ collection can be positively attributed to Gilbert, it is clear that Gilbert was with Brewster for photo sessions during the years they worked together. The photographic relationship between Brewster and Gilbert is intriguing. There is new enthusiasm to examine Brewster’s journals and diaries more closely now that they are digitized and being transcribed, to clarify Gilbert’s role in photographic collaboration with Brewster. As a result of identifying connections between the collections in the Museum of American Bird Art at the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the EMLA, a cooperative research project is underway.

Looking for a challenge? The Smithsonian Institution Archives and the Smithsonian Transcription Center are teaming up for a #HerNaturalHistory-themed transcription challenge. Starting today (8 March), help a team of #volunpeers transcribe field notes from conservation biologist Devra Kleiman and botanist Cleofé Calderon. Dive into observations of golden lion tamarins with Kleiman, who worked at Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park from 1972 to 2001. And head to South America with Calderón to collect grasses for Smithsonian’s Department of Botany.