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:

 

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

  1. There is no space on either side of the pipe character:
    • Incorrect: [[term | term]]
    • Correct: [[term|term]]
  2. There is no space next to the double braces:
    • Incorrect: [[ term|term ]]
    • Correct: [[term|term]]
  3. Do not tag a term into more than one main subject category
  4. Follow the exact punctuation, capitalization, and spacing protocols established in the Subject Browse document [link to document or page]
  5. Tag a person, place, or subject only once at its first appearance on a page
  6. 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:

 

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:

 

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:

 

Government, Law, and Military

Government, Law, and Military features topics related to the government, elections, legal issues, the military, and war.

Examples:

 

Historic Homes and Places

Historic Homes and Places includes historic named homes and places.

Examples:

 

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:

 

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:

 

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:

 

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:

 

Places

This category is for geographic place names, and always follows the same format: country - state - county/province - city/town

Some cities are their own governmental entity, and are not in a county, so that portion of the tag is skipped: