Transcribe Bentham project reaches 10,000th transcription
An experiment in 'scholarly crowdsourcing', which engages the public in the online transcription of papers written by the celebrated philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), has published its 10,000th transcription this week. This is a significant milestone for the award-winning Transcribe Bentham project, which has been running since 2010. The major online initiative to transcribe the manuscripts of Jeremy Bentham housed in the UCL archives asks volunteers to assist academics in researching Bentham's ideas, by transcribing the notoriously bad handwriting in his manuscripts. Bentham, considered the 'spiritual founder' of UCL, was the founder of the modern doctrine of utilitarianism, a seminal figure in legal philosophy, a major theorist of representative democracy, and the originator of contemporary notions of surveillance through his panopticon prison scheme. The manuscripts in UCL Library's Special Collections, given to UCL after his death, cover the period of Bentham's life and consist of drafts and notes for published and several substantial unpublished works, correspondence to and from Bentham, and other ephemera. A few years ago, it was thought that the collection would never be transcribed in its entirety due to the huge nature of the task - but it now looks like a distinct possibility. Professor Philip Schofield The Transcribe Bentham project digitises and makes available digital images of Bentham's unpublished manuscripts through a platform known as the 'Transcription Desk', where volunteers can access and transcribe the material to help the work of UCL's Bentham Project, and further improve access to and search ability of the collection.
