Want to become a Top Journeyman Editor?

Maybe what you’re really asking yourself is what is a Journeyman Editor? In the world of the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (CHNC), a journeyman editor is a text corrector. Correcting text improves the database’s search capabilities and therefore improves the search results of fellow CHNC users.

The text correction interface is one of the many new features of the new CHNC site. The CHNC database uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to read an image, in this case newspapers, and translates it into text. OCR enables searching of large quantities of text but the translation is never 100% accurate. If the translation is not accurate the database may not be able to find your search term. The accuracy of the OCR depends on the quality of the original document. For example, documents that are faded with small print can result in poor OCR text. The accuracy also depends on the quality of the OCR software at the time a document was digitized. And as we know technology improves and changes on a daily basis. Many of the newspapers have been in the database for over 10 years and their OCR text can look like gobbledygook.

This is why we need more Journeyman Editors! We need your help to improve the text. Improved text will result in more accurate search results. And we want you to have fun at the same time! The steps to become a Journeyman Editor are easy.

1. Create a CHNC account.
2. CHNC homepage
3. CHNC home page
4. Once you have found your desired article, make sure it is highlighted. Clicking on the article image will highlight it.
5. Once the article is highlighted, click “Correct this Text” and the screen will split into two sections. The right section is the image of the original article and the left is used to correct the text.
6. You correct the text line by line and sections at a time depending on the length of the article. When you click on the text correction section, a red box will appear over the original text to indicate where you are in the article.
7. Navigate through sections by clicking “Next.” Remember to save often. But don’t worry if you forget, the system will remind you.
8. When you are finished correcting your article click “ Save & exit.” The system will save the changes and return you to the normal viewing screen.

The systems keeps a tally of the words that you have corrected. The more lines of text you correct the higher you will rise on the ladder to Top Journeyman Editor. Currently Jude is our Top Journeyman Editor with over 34,000 words corrected! But Ratcliff Gulch isn’t far behind with over 12,000 words. I only rank 21 out of 66. Join the fun and at the same time help improve the CHNC!

• This topic was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Regan.