Frequently Asked Questions

Terminology
User Roles
Transcription Instructions
Managing Collections and Works
Uploads
Imports
User Access and Privileges

Terminology

What is a collection? A collection is a set of documents (works) that have been collected together to form a unit. Each work must belong to a collection, each page to a work. Collections and works can be translated as well as transcribed. By default a collection is visible to anyone accessing FromThePage from the internet. This can be changed by the owner of a collection.

What is a work? A work is an individual item (book, article, journal, letter, etc.) that is uploaded into a collection. A work belongs to a single collection.

What is a page? A page is the smallest unit within a work (such as pages in a book, article, journal, etc.) It is a single image from a work, generally a single page within a book or a letter, although occasionally a scan can span multiple pages in one image.

What is a project? A project is a collection with at least one uploaded or imported work.

What are document sets? Document sets are subsets of works in a collection, which can be used to focus an editing project or to create a public exhibition about a particular focus of the documents. These can be created by the owner of a collection.

What are subjects? Subjects are topics within a document which could be grouped within a category. Subjects work similarly to tags. You can create subjects when you are transcribing pages or after you have transcribed them by going into a collection and selecting the subjects tab.

What are categories? Categories are groups of related subjects/information. Categories allow you to visualize relationships between subjects (topics) within a collection. For example, you can visualize the frequency of a subjects's occurence in a collection and compare that with the frequencies of other subjects' occurrences within the collection. Categories and subjects only search and link within a single collection. Categories are created by the owner of the collection.

User Roles

What is an owner? An owner is the user to whom a collection or work, and all the associated pages and sets, belongs. An owner has full control over a collection, works and pages associated with them. Owners also control the privileges assigned to a work or page.

Can a collection have multiple owners? Yes, there can be multiple owners of a collection. However, the original owner (who uploaded the collection) cannot be deleted.

What is a collaborator? Collaborators transcribe or translate pages in a work/collection. They can also edit page titles if the work owner has given them permission to do so.

Who can transcribe a work? Anyone with a FromThePage account can transcribe any work, unless collaborators have been restricted by the owner of the work.

Transcription Instructions

How do I transcribe a document in FromThePage? Documents are transcribed by the individual pages. From a collection, choose the work and page that you are interested in. Click on the Transcribe tab to begin transcribing. Transcription conventions (described below) explain what to do if you are not sure what a word or section of the document says. Any specific transcription conventions for the work are located toward the bottom of the individual page.

What are transcription conventions? Transcription conventions are the formatting and standards used when a page is transcribed. Specific conventions for a collection/work can be set by the owner. The specific conventions for a work are found toward the bottom of a page being transcribed.

Examples of transcription conventions include:

• Using one carriage return for a line break and two carriage returns for a paragraph break.
• Using HTML markup in FromThePage
• Basic HTML markup tags include:
  • <s>text</s> or <strike>text</strike> for strikethrough
  • <u>text</u> for underline
  • <strong>text</strong> or <b>text</b> for bold
  • <i>text</i> for italic
  • <a href="URL">link text</a> for hyperlink
• Conventions for transcription uncertainty or editorial intervention
  • Word that you think you know but aren't sure: follow with a question mark - so "Smith?"
  • Word for which you can only understand a few letters or none: between square brackets, put as many dots as you think there are letters, inserting actual letters only where legible - so [B..w..n]
  • Editorial comments such as "above the line", "in blue ink", or "illegible": place in curly brackets, with any text preserved in quotes, after a colon - so {in a second hand above the line: "recently"}; for carats, write {carat: "insertion"}

Managing Collections and Works

Only an owner can add or delete a collection, work or page.

How do I get started? All works must belong to a collection. To add a new collection, go to the Owner Dashboard (via the Dashboard button). Click the "Actions" button at the top right corner to create a new collection or an empty work. Once the collection has been created, you can upload or import the works through the Start a Project tab in the Owner Dashboard. See Uploads and Imports for more information.

How do I delete a collection or work? Click on the collection or work you would like to delete, and go to the Settings tab. Scroll down to see a "Delete Collection" or "Delete Work" button on the left side of the page.

How do I add a page to a work? From the Owner Dashboard, go to the specific work to which you'd like to add a page. In the Pages tab, click the "Add New Page" button to the right to add a new page to the work. You can use the arrows to the right of the page listings to arrange the pages in the correct order.

How do I delete a page from a work? From the Owner Dashboard, go to the specific work where the page resides. In the Pages tab, click the Delete button to the right of the page you would like to delete.

How do I create a document set? Only the owner of a collection can create a document set. Within the collection, go into the Settings tab and clicking on the "Create Document Sets" button on the right side of the page.

How do I turn on support for translating a work or collection? Translation support is set at the work level. From the Owner Dashboard, choose the work and go to the Settings tab. In the Settings tab, check the "Supports translation" checkbox to turn on support for translation. This will add an additional "Translate" tab to each page of the work.

What does the "Pages are meaningful" checkbox mean? In some works, pages are meaningful semantic divisions, such as in a journal with a separate date for each page. In others, the text is more free-flowing, and the individual pages are not separate sections, such as in letters or a book. When "Pages are meaningful" is checked, the page titles are prominently displayed, because they are meaningful divisions.

How do I create or delete a category? When you are in the Subjects tab of a collection, you can add a category by clicking on the Actions button on the right side of the screen. Then select a Root/Child category. You can also delete a category in this view.

Uploads

How are the files inside of zip folders treated when uploaded? Zip files may contain folders containing images, PDFs, or folders containing PDFs. Each folder will be treated as a different work, so do not mix files that belong to different works in the same folder. Each PDF will be treated as its own work, so do not split PDF files among more than one work. For example, a zip file with 3 images, 2 PDFs, and 1 folder containing 5 more images would create 4 works: the top level images in one, each PDF in their own work, and a last work containing the 5 images from the folder.

What are the acceptable file formats and file sizes for uploads?

• Acceptable file formats: PDF, PNG, GIF, JPG
• Acceptable file sizes: File sizes are limited by the upload timeout, so we recommend files that are less than 100 MB per file uploaded (either individually or in a zip file). FromThePage will resize each image file down to 1 MB.

What are the page image guidelines?

• PNG, GIF and JPG files are all acceptable.
• Images should be oriented so that they are right side up.
• Images should be split down the spine, so that only one page is visible on an image. (See the autosplit tool if you need to split two-page images.)
• Images should be named so that an alphabetical sort will result in the correct page order. Note, this may require "zero-padding" for page numbers - page_09.jpg, page_10.jpg will sort correctly, but page_9.jpg, page_10.jpg will not.

Imports

How do I import a collection from the Internet Archive? First, on the website www.archive.org, locate the book you want to import. Copy the URL of the book. In the Owner Dashboard, choose the Start a Project tab. Click the "Import from Archive.org" link. In the popup window, paste the URL from archive.org and click Import Work. This will take a few minutes. Once the work is imported, the archive.org book will need to be reviewed and converted. For more information on this process, please see Import the Internet Archive Book.

How do I import from an IIIF Repository? In the Owner Dashboard, choose the Start a Project tab. If you already have a manifest URL, copy it into the text box at the bottom of the "Import from a IIIF Repository" section and click import. Otherwise, click the link for the relevant institution. This will take a few minutes. Once the list of institutions appears, click on the manifest of interest. A description will appear, and at the bottom, you can click the Import button. The next screen will give you an option of the collection to import into, and then you can click import.

User Access and Privileges

Can an owner restrict access to collections or works? Yes, access can be restricted at the collection or work level, though not at the level of a specific page.

How do I manage access to my collections? After you sign in, go to the Owner Dashboard by clicking the Dashboard button. Select the collection you want to restrict. In the Settings tab, click the "Make Collection Private" button to restrict visibility to the owners of the collection. Additional owners can be added in the dropdown box below.

How do I manage access to my works? After you sign in, go to the Owner Dashboard by clicking the Dashboard button. Click the link for the work you would like to restrict. In the Settings tab for the work, select the "Restrict collaborators" checkbox and then hit apply. Once collaborators are restricted, a dropdown box appears where collaborators can be added.

Who can transcribe a work? Anyone with a FromThePage account can transcribe any work, unless "restrict collaborators" is checked by the owner in the Work Settings tab. If collaborators are restricted, the owner will need to add each collaborator to the work in the Settings tab within the work.

Further information can also be found in the FromThePage wiki.