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Transcription
Many of the primary sources in the units contain text: letters, newspaper articles, data tables, etc. Factors such as the age and condition of the source, or in some cases the handwriting of the author, can affect legibility. Legibility becomes even more difficult when the materials are digitized so that they can be shown on the Internet.
To improve legibility, primary sources that contain text have been enlarged. The Size line of the source's data table is intended to notify your students of this resizing, so they understand that the source they see online appears to be larger than it really is. While enlargements help make the sources more legible, they are not always enough to ensure readability.
For this reason we have included a transcription for sources that contain text. Transcriptions can be found below the source's data chart. The transcriptions also allow us to present some useful features for your students. One of these is the glossary feature. Words or phrases that may require further definition have been linked to an online glossary. By clicking on the highlighted
words, your students will open a glossary window that contains definitions of the difficult words or phrases that they will encounter while working with a unit's text sources.
Another useful feature of the transcriptions is that, within longer source transcriptions, key passages appear in a bold font so that students can easily see which sections are relevant to the unit they are studying. Students who are interested in reading through a complete transcription still have an opportunity to do so, while those who might be discouraged by larger passages can go immediately to the sections the unit focuses on.
While the transcriptions offer some useful features, students should still use the View button to take a look at the image of the source. They may enjoy trying to do a transcription of their own, a process that will give them firsthand experience with some of the difficulties historians encounter when trying to work with printed or handwritten materials. They will also gain insight into some of the decisions we have made to preserve mistakes, such as misspellings that appeared in the original source.
