Museum Notebook: Transcribing documents – it's the words that matter

A copy of a photograph of John Morgan, included in Robert Morgan's edition of his memoir. Unknown photographer, undated. Whanganui Regional Museum Collection ref 1802.10474

The archives department of the Whanganui Regional Museum has a multitude of important historical records and documents.

Transcribing them into a readable digital form means that the information is then readily available to all.

Rules and conventions apply to any transcription of written records. The result must be an exact copy of the original.

Misspellings, awkward or missing punctuation, unusual abbreviations, unconventional forms of letters, exclamation marks, unexpected capital letters - it is necessary to put them all in and copy them carefully to create a true and accurate copy of the original.

The older the original, the more likely it is that it is very fragile or even damaged. Whole words or phrases may irrevocably now be missing. What can be done about these, and what to do when words seem indecipherable or illegible? Then it is possible to highlight the problematic word or phrase by putting it in square brackets, which can include question marks or a series of dashes to indicate anything that appears lost.

Manuscripts written in ink are much easier to read and decipher than those written in pencil, which tend to fade quicker. Numbered pages help with the sorting of a narrative into its logical and hopefully correct place, and any dates included are clues when trying to order the disordered.

Archivist Sandi Black has previously written about John Morgan, an English settler who arrived in Whanganui in 1854, working as a farmer and involved with local politics, and took up drawing in his retirement. The museum holds an archive of papers and documents written by Morgan, donated by his family.

The papers are hand-written on rough paper, sometimes in pencil, sometimes ink. No pages are numbered and there are sometimes multiple drafts of the same information. There are few dates to the anecdotes he provides, and Morgan occasionally reproduces, with acknowledgement, excerpts from contemporary documents and diaries of people known to him.

A page from John Morgan's original hand-written manuscript, with frayed edges, edits in pencil, and additions adhered to the page. Whanganui Regional Museum Collection ref 1935.42.1

John Morgan's great-grandson, Robert Morgan, has had access to this archive and to a variety of other family information. In 2002 he produced a readable spiral-bound edition of John Morgan's memoir, adding in contextual and family information not mentioned in Morgan's own work. John Morgan's own words still speak clearly from the page, but with the added information it is not a true transcription.

Working through the original work and reading Morgan's unaltered words, we can wonder at the extent and serendipity of his foresight and diligence in keeping his account and memories over such a long period.

The overwhelming impression of John Morgan, is of his pride in his being able to record his own place in this important colonial and local history, and to acknowledge the achievements of all those who, like him, endeavoured to create a new place in a new country.

• Mary Laurenson is a volunteer at Whanganui Regional Museum.