Tagging Protocol
Voices of the Eastern Shore’s subject tagging is designed to improve access into the materials and link common themes, people and places. The main subject browsing categories were selected to capture historical themes within the archival documents with the idea that future topics that arise in future phases of the project, such as the Civil War in the 1860s, would fall into one main categories chosen for this project. The Subject Browse categories serve as a mutable, living document that will grow to accommodate more people, places, and subjects as the project progresses.
In FromThePage, Voices of the Eastern Shore tags words and/or phrases in documents with subject tags that fall within the following eight main subject categories, which are described in more detail further below:
- Business, Economy, and Travel
- Education, Religion, Literacy, and Culture
- Enslavement, Manumission, and Free People of Color
- Government, Law, and Military
- Historic Homes and Places
- Home, Health, and Social Life
- People
- Places
Tagging Process
The Voices of the Eastern Shore team asks that volunteer transcribers do not perform any subject tagging. This critical part of the workflow is complicated and is completed only by Voices of the Eastern Shore team during the transcription review process.
All subject tagging workflow takes place in FromThePage (FTP), the transcribing platform used for the project for all transcription and tagging. This tagging supports and enables users on the project website to make connections to people, geographic locations, and themes within the documents. For example, if a user clicks on a tagged/highlighted name of a a person, it will then pull up a biography about that person as well as a list that shows every single page where they are mentioned in the materials. For geographic locations, users can click on “Philadelphia” and bring up every instance of when that location is mentioned in the documents.
This subject tagging is accomplished using double brackets [[subject tag|term to be tagged in a letter]] as well as the vertical bar | or “pipe” character.
Important formatting issues to remember for subject tagging
- There is no space on either side of the pipe character:
- Incorrect: [[term | term]]
- Correct: [[term|term]]
- There is no space next to the double braces:
- Incorrect: [[ term|term ]]
- Correct: [[term|term]]
- Do not tag a term into more than one main subject category
- Follow the exact punctuation, capitalization, and spacing protocols established in the Subject Browse document [link to document or page]
- Tag a person, place, or subject only once at its first appearance on a page
- Always list the approved tag to the left of the pipe character, even if the term will appear the exact same way on the right side of the pipe character.
- Incorrect: [[Coffee]]
- Correct: [[Beverages - Coffee|Coffee]]
A Subject Browse schema was created for Voices of the Eastern Shore to support tagging of subjects to enable users of the website to find connections in the historic documents between people, places, and various subjects. The main subject browsing categories were selected to capture historical themes within the archival documents with the idea that future topics that arise, such as the Financial Panic of 1819, would fall into one of the eight main categories chosen for this project. The Subject Browse categories are meant to be a living, mutable hierarchy that can grow to accommodate more people, places and subjects in the future.
In FromThePage, the Voices of the Eastern Shore editorial team tags words and/or phrases in documents with subject tags that fall within the following eight main subject categories, which were chosen so future subjects that are added will fall under the umbrella of one of these main categories:
Business, Economy, and Travel
Business, Economy, and Travel covers business and trade occupations, places of business, newspapers, financial issues and travel via watercraft, carriages, etc.
Examples:
- Banks - Bank of Somerset
- Merchants - Teackle, Dennis & Teackle
- Travel - Watercraft - Packet Ships
Education, Religion, Literacy, and Culture
Education, Religion, Literacy, and Culture highlights everything relating to education, from graduation to universities; religion, from churches to ministers; literacy, from books to poets; and culture, from sheet music to clubs and secret societies.
Examples:
- Duels Music - Sheet music
- Schools - Madame Grelaud’s French School
Enslavement, Manumission, and Free People of Color
Enslavement, Manumission, and Free People of Color covers issues related to enslavement and freedom for African Americans.
Examples:
- Emancipation – Freedom suits
- Enslavement - Enslaved people
- Enslavement - Slave trade - Abolitionism
Government, Law, and Military
Government, Law, and Military features topics related to the government, elections, legal issues, the military, and war.
Examples:
- Courts and Judicial Systems - Levy courts
- Elections - Voting
- Legislation - Maryland - Education
Historic Homes and Places
Historic Homes and Places includes historic named homes and places.
Examples:
- Teackle Mansion
- Bothwell Castle
- Eyre Hall
Home, Health, and Social Life
Home, Health, and Social Life covers many topics related to home life, from food and beverages, gardening and fashion; health, from childbirth, accidents, to death; and social life from balls, holidays, to weddings.
Examples:
- Fashion - Cloth - Bombazine
- Food - Grains
- Health - Disease and illness - Ague
People
This is a list of people mentioned in the historic materials. Formatting of their names follows this format: Last name, First name, middle names and/or maiden names for women, year of birth - year of death [if known]. If someone always goes by the same nickname, it is included in quotes.
Examples:
- Bancker, Sarah Upshur Teackle, 1783-1843
- Campbell, Andrew Donaldson, 1777-1854
- Gilmor, Mary Ann “Molly”
- Smith, 1774-1852
For enslaved people with no known last names, they are listed by their first names and year of birth - year of death [if known].
Examples:
- Caleb, c. 1767-1815
- Nanny, c. 1763-
- Joe or Joseph, born c. 1791-2
For individuals where we hold no hope of identifying them due to a lack of context in the letter, we do not tag them.
Examples:
- Mr. Brown
- Mr. J_____
Places
This category is for geographic place names, and always follows the same format: country - state - county/province - city/town
- Scotland - Lanarkshire - Glasgow
- United States - Maryland - Somerset County - Princess Anne
- United States - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia County - Philadelphia
Some cities are their own governmental entity, and are not in a county, so that portion of the tag is skipped:
- United States - Maryland - Baltimore City
- United States - District of Columbia - Washington D.C.