As I near the end of my month-long beta testing, some thoughts on how you might introduce Leo to new users—or, what I wish I knew when I started.
Some things that might be in a “getting started” document:
- Quality of image. In my experience, Leo wants clear edges to pages. It’s OK with a photograph that shows two pages of a folio volume, side by side. Higher resolution helps. I found that using tripod to hold my camera above the page not only makes for better images, but greatly speeds up scanning.
- Give a list of things that Leo might find problematic, and how to read bad results. In my work, that’s been ink blots on pages, lines on pages, tables with names and numbers, and ditto marks. If you get a transcipt with with many lines of dashes, go back and transcibe around the table or the ink blot. Check that Leo isn’t filling it what it thinks the ditto marks mean.
- Organize your files carefully before uploading them. Think about the names and numbers, and upload them in the order that you would like them to be transcribed.
- Explain how best to use the options that come up on the second screen of “+ New Item.” (Maybe change that word “item”—it suggests an individual page.)
- Exporting. Explain the “zip” export feature. Call attention to the three dots in panel to the left, to export groups of files; the only “Export” button visible on the page is in the panel to the right, for an individual file.
- Explain “lists,” and more generally, how best to organize your data. I haven’t figured this out.
I’ll suggest more as I keep using Leo.