An adaptative user interface for genealogical document transcription

Abstract

Lately, genealogy has become a hobby not only in the United States, UK or France but also in many other countries where it is now widespread. The main sources of information for genealogists are different kinds of genealogical documents (census, church vital records, wills, …). In fact, and specifically in Spain, several projects to digitalize heritage and genealogical documentation have developed recently, in order to improve its access and to preserve its conservation state. Such digital information is useful, but it would be even more useful to have its transcription in a searchable support like databases or web repositories. This chapter analyses the opportunities and characteristics of such transcription projects and describes a transcription user interface tool. This proposal allows for easy, intuitive and fast design of a user interface to transcript genealogical documentation, in agreement with the contents of each different kind of genealogical documents. Given an XML Schema (XSD) describing a genealogical document structure and contents, this tool allows the user to adapt and personalize a user interface to transcribe the document contents, while obtaining an XML file to be stored in some database management system or to be shared among genealogists. At any moment during the transcription process, user interface may be adapted to the user requirements and to the document characteristics, so, this adaption is dynamic, intuitive and user friendly.