Tag Archives: transcribathon

Recipe transcribathon time!

We are delighted to announce the third annual recipe transcribathon, hosted by the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective.

Recipe containing elf hoof from Margaret Baker’s manuscript. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.619.

Fancy taking a dip into some seventeenth-century recipes? Learning a bit about reading old handwriting? And participating in a wider project with lots of other recipe enthusiasts?

Then the EMROC Transcribathon just might be for you!

The goal in previous years has been to take one book and finish a triple-keyed transcription of it over twelve hours. In 2016, 128 people from around the world finished Lady Castleton’s book, and in 2015, we had ninety-three transcribers complete Rebeckah Winche’s book.

This year, EMROC is trying something a little different. Rather than focus on one book, there will be a BANQUET OF BOOKS. As Amy Tigner of EMROC explains,

Our goal is to have 10 completed texts this year, that is 10 triple-transcribed and vetted early modern recipe books that can be downloaded in a searchable pdf. We currently have a number of texts that are either partially transcribed or fully transcribed but not completely vetted. So, in working to complete these texts we will be offering a banquet of possibilities for those interested in learning more about early modern recipes and paleography.

Page from Cromwell’s book, with code. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.8.

The three books on offer are: Margaret Baker, Susannah Packe, and Letitia Cromwell. I have a soft spot for Baker, having worked on her book with my Digital Recipe Books Project module last year. (The class blogged about it here  and developed a contextual online exhibition about the book here.) The Baker manuscript has many intriguing elements, such as excerpts from published medical and alchemical treatises and a recipe that calls for elf hoof! But the other books have their delights, as well. Cromwell has a recipe for the proverbial humble pie and a page written in code, while Packe has a great sections with candy, fruit wines, and beer.

For those who like things a little easier, I recommend Baker (almost entirely one hand, fairly clear, throughout) or Packe (one easy and neatly spaced hand, and one slightly harder, messier hand). Cromwell, with its mix of hands will appeal more to those with experience.

Example from Packe’s book. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library, Va215.

EMROC also has helpful guides to doing transcription and how to use the online transcription tool, Dromio. You can also send in your questions to other transcribers on Twitter or by commenting on the EMROC blog posts (https://emroc.hypotheses.org) that day. If you have never used Dromio before, please feel free to take a peek behind the scenes, try it out, and send in your questions. (Instructions here for getting involved and accessing Dromio.)

Interested? Then please mark your calendars for NOVEMBER 7. I’ll be kicking things off in the U.K. from 12:30-4:30 p.m. GMT, both virtually and from the University of Essex Colchester campus. And several American groups will be joining in from 9:00 a.m. EST.

If you’re joining virtually, please keep checking the EMROC blog, Facebook page, Twitter account (@EMRecipesOnline) and Twitter hashtag (#EMROCtranscribes) for updates, or to join in the conversation. We hope that you will let us know about your experience and tell us any interesting find or puzzling conundrum you discover!

EMROC 2nd Annual Transcribathon!

Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.600.
Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.600.

Like early modern recipes? Enjoy puzzle solving? Then… how about joining in the 2nd Annual Transcribathon, hosted by the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective?

This virtual transcribathon will be taking place on 9 November–and all you need to join is a computer and an internet connection! And NO EXPERIENCE is necessary.

This year, EMROC will be working on the recipe book of Lady Grace Castleton.

For more details on the event and how to join, please see the announcement on the EMROC website.

Transcription Communities: Experiencing a Transcribathon in a Class Setting

By Nancy Simpson-Younger

As part of my Book in Society class, thirteen students took part in the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective’s Transcribathon on Wednesday, October 7th, For this group, transcribing Winche’s work was the culmination of a two-week unit on paleography, which covered italic and secretary hands as well as early modern print and manuscript culture. (This unit was also part of a larger historical trajectory for the course itself—which, by December, will have covered artifacts from scrolls to iPads.) Because of this context, my students experienced the Transcribathon as a reflection of a particular historical moment—but also as an intersection between three communities: our own class group, the larger EMROC consortium, and the early modern communities of recipe writers that we’ve been studying. In this post, I’d like to explore the intersections between some of these historical and community contexts, and then to share some questions that these intersections helped us investigate in our class.

Nancy blog pic 1

Until we began the transcription unit, my students had read about the communities that spring up around books (for example, groups of monks in a scriptorium, or professional Torah scribes)—but we hadn’t experienced a textually-rooted community firsthand. EMROC was a fantastic community to start with, because it not only unites scholars from around the world but provides electronic forums (Twitter, blogging, etc.) that students can easily access and participate in. During the Transcribathon, for example, my students quickly started tweeting their findings, and they were delighted to experience instant dialogue with scholars from different time zones:

Nancy blog pic 2

Using Twitter was particularly compelling for a couple of reasons. First, many of my students are Communications Studies majors, interested in examining community discourse (and the role of technology in that discourse). Second, Twitter allowed us to interrogate the relationship between the manuscript and the digitized version(s) of that manuscript in a new way. While we had used the work of Heidi Brayman Hackel and Ian Moulton to discuss the digitization of early modern archives, we hadn’t experienced manuscript digitization in a realtime, community-centered format. The Twitter feed allowed us to ask how social media technology enables (re)iterations of a text in a way that recontextualizes not only the words, but the history and signification of each recipe.

Nancy blog pic 3

This led us to start asking some important questions—both during the Transcribathon and in its aftermath. If a word is clipped out of a manuscript, how does it signify differently? What happens when that word is placed into a new context—not only the context of the Tweet itself, but the context of EMROC’s work, or a laptop (or, indeed, IHOP?) What’s the relationship between the recipe part (word or ingredient) and the recipe or manuscript whole? Sharing pictures of specific textual snippets allowed us to start asking these questions, and to ask what the ramifications of social media might really be for signification, writ large.

Nancy blog pic 4

Nancy blog pic 5

Because it enabled these questions, linking the topics of historical and community context, the Transcribathon was a compelling wrap-up for our early modern unit. For the students, the project also drove home the notion that historical texts aren’t frozen in a particular historical or geographical spot. Instead, early modern manuscripts inspire ongoing scholarship and conversation, allowing us to ask what the effect of our own technology might be, and how intersecting contexts might ultimately re-inflect meaning.

This post originally appeared on the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective blog. The blog has an excellent series of posts about the Transcribathon, written both during and after the event. It’s a new blog and one worth following!

An intriguing invitation

This in from the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective, happily coinciding with The Recipes Project‘s Digital Humanities month…

winche sample pageA seventeenth-century recipe book. Twelve hours. 208 pages. And transcribers from around the world.

Our goal? Using the Folger Shakespeare Library’s online transcription platform, we’ll collaboratively produce a searchable transcription of Rebeckah Winche’s recipe book in twelve hours.

On 7 October, please join the Early Modern Recipe Online Collective (EMROC) for our first annual Transcribathon. We will have transcription groups working at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the University of Essex, the University of Akron, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Texas Arlington, with other individuals joining in virtually throughout the day.

Along the way, participants will virtually meet scholars from around the world, have the opportunity to participate in a series of transcription sprints, and emerge from the day with a line for their CV—all from their own home, classroom, or office! NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY – we’ll walk you through the coding and offer pointers on the handwriting.

Even if you don’t want to transcribe, you can still join the fun in other ways.

For more information see here. To join us, email Lisa Smith (lisa.smith@essex.ac.uk).