Let the research … BEGIN!
February 20, 2014
Well in fairness to my Post Title I have already begun my research on Pvt. George Karn, but this is the first assigned research so…
In order to answer the questions regarding the sources I found on what my soldier did in the war, I need to know what did my soldier do in the war. I know he received a G.S.W. (gunshot wound) in the left shoulder, according to many documents I have. I will use one specific doc to answer the questions posed. The source is what looks to be an admissions slip from Mt. Pleasant General Hospital prescribed om June 11, 1864. It gives George Karn’s age, address, rank and regiment, the location of the wound and the “nature of the weapon or missile,” which is musketball. This form would have been written during triage I would imagine and it is not signed by anyone, but it would probably be used as a sort of case file. The source is in the public domain.
I think the OCR is a very valuable tool. Sure the reprinted text is not 100% accurate but if I did not have this tool at all it would take a very long time to transpose an entire document of any size. With the OCR the user can cut and paste the parts that are accurate and then focus on those that are not. With the documents I OCR’ed I would estimate about 75-80% of the text was accurate, which would leave me to only transpose a quarter or so of the doc. Much less work for someone who has a lot of docs to convert.