Introduction

This practical handbook tackles what you need to know before, during, and after transcription. Appropriate for varying levels of expertise and written for transcriptionists, ethnographers, researchers, oral historians, participant observers, and even amateurs who plan to write their family history, this helpful guide by ethnographer Willow Roberts Powers covers a wide range of essential topics:

• why transcription methodology is essential
• factors to be considered before transcribing (including reasons not to create a transcript)
• stages of transcription and recommended guidelines
• methodology
• editing
• incorporation of contextual information
• transcribing performances
• interactions between transcriptionists, participants in the record events, researchers, and other future users of the transcripts

Appendices contain sample forms, lists and discussions of punctuation symbols typically used for notation systems, and sample excerpts from real transcripts.