The Alan Jackson Archive

Background

Alan Jackson was an inveterate collector of information on all aspects of the railways and recorded his data on a series of index cards. He left his collection of cards and supporting material to the Railway and Canal Historical Society and they have passed them to us at the National Railway Museum. The cards have been digitised and a team of volunteers is entering the hand written data into Excel spreadsheets. When this lengthy process is complete, the data will be transferred into the Museum’s systems, to form an invaluable archive, available to specialist and general users.


Help make a lasting contribution to the future of railway research


The Role

As one of our volunteers you’d receive batches of up to 50 digitised cards, together with a prepared spreadsheet and guidance notes on how to transcribe the information. Included with this is reference material to explain the codes Alan Jackson used. A digitised card looks like this:


An index card from the Alan Jackson Archive


and, when transcribed, the spreadsheet looks like this:


An example spreadsheet, used for transcribing data from the Alan Jackson index cards.


We need

Many more transcribers, to help us move this project forward

Transcribers need

• A computer with a good sized monitor, Windows 98 or later, and Microsoft Excel
• A broadband link to receive and transmit files
• Reasonable keyboard skills
• A willingness to sit at the computer for blocks of time, capturing data

and some knowledge of railways can he helpful.

Does this project interest you? If so, you can find a simple application form here

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