The transcription process was a relatively smooth process once I continued to see the same words used over and over again. It was very tedious and difficult to make sense of the sentences, but as the man from the Bethlehem Moravian Archives said, one should focus on each word individually in order to transcribe most efficiently. Some of the words were spelled horrendously, but when sounded out I could tell what Powell was trying to say. A lot of the words had unnecessary extra letters such as “Sisster” and “paine”, however Powell did a fine job of documenting his experience with Shamokin Indians. Because we write in print, I have forgotten how to interpret some cursive letters so that was an added challenge.
At first the process was slow, but then I became comfortable with it and quickened my pace. When reviewing my transcription, I feel as though it was originally pretty accurate and there were only a few minor details regarding how to copy down a symbol that wasn’t available on Text Edit. I liked using Text Edit because it didn’t try to correct the misspelled words very time and I could freely type without any distractions.
The Metadata form was difficult to fill out as well because we didn’t have enough much information to write down answers in the Relation and Identifier categories for example. I filled out the categories to the best of my availability, utilizing all of the information I had.