I am looking for a description of the process that was used to transcribe data in the various censuses (US, UK, etc.). I would like to know some basic statistics about the process:
- When was it done for the various censuses?
- How many people were involved?
- What sort of error checking was performed?
- How many records were processed in total? On average per transcriber?
- Were transcribers paid or were they volunteers? Were some paid for QA?
In particular, I am interested in the description of the earliest examples of this kind of work.
CLARIFICATION:
I am interested in understanding the effort that was required to coordinate a large group of volunteers to convert a set of handwritten documents into an electronic format that subsequently can be indexed. No two collections (or transcription efforts) are the same, so I don't think there is a single answer to each of my sub-questions. Rather, expect that the various censuses were all done differently, but an overall average effort may emerge as the single answer. I would be very happy with some references that document the transcription and QA processes. Does this help clarify some of the issues raised in the comments?