• Title / Position: Software Engineer
• Organization: Independent
• Website: manuscripttranscription.blogspot.com
• Twitter: benwbrum

I'm an independent software developer in Austin, Texas. For the past seven years I spent my evenings and weekends developing FromThePage, an open-source web application for transcribing handwritten material. In addition to my own transcription projects, the tool has been used by the Balboa Park Online Collaborative to host the transcription and analysis of field notes held by the San Diego Natural History Museum as well as by Southwestern University Special Collections to host transcription of the Mexican War Diary of Zenas Matthews. I'm currently working on a transcription tool and database for British parish registers and census records from 1538-1911. I'll be presenting a workshop on Regular Expressions at THATCampLAC, but I'd also be very interested in conversations about: Representing tabular manuscript data like financial records, probate inventories, and account books Motivating and de-motivating volunteers in participatory projects Copyright over cultural heritage data outside the US How to represent variant editions of the same material in a database and how to re-present those variants to researchers online Historical GIS and recording or displaying uncertainty and ambiguity