Pia Eckhart (University of Freiburg) and Ina Serif (University of Basel)
In the fall of 2018 a workshop on the possibilities of integrating digital tools and computational methods into historical research was held at the chair for Medieval History II at the University of Freiburg. Over coffee, the idea came up to organize a hands-on Transkribus seminar for students. Our interest in this tool, which offers an environment for the (semi)automated transcription of handwritten and printed documents, had been primarily research driven so far: Ina had already used Transkribus in several projects, and Pia was in the process of evaluating the role the software could play in a new research project. Now we discovered our common interest: Ina was about to publish a Transkribus tutorial and Pia was planning to integrate the tool into her next paleography course, so we decided to put our heads together and come up with a joined plan.
Goals
Our goal was to show students how to take a first step into the digital realm of history, without having to learn how to code or pay for expensive software, and to teach them how to integrate different tools, resources and methods into their own research.
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