All posts by Elaine Leong

An intriguing invitation

By Elaine Leong

winche sample page
v.b.366: “Receipt booke of Rebeckah Winche”

A 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 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).

 

Back to school….

By Elaine Leong

Welcome to the 2015-16 academic year!

Time flies. It’s hard to believe but the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective (EMROC) enters its fourth year this September. Since our launch in 2012, nearly 80 students have transcribed over 900 pages across 5 campuses. In classes such as Lisa Smith’s ‘Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe’, Jennifer Munroe’s ‘Thinking Green: Eco-Approaches to Texts’, Amy Tigner’s ‘Recipes for Literature/Literature of Recipes’ and Rebecca Laroche’s ENGL 3200 course, students have worked collaboratively to transcribe the recipe books of Johanna St. John, Anne Fanshawe, Jane Baber, Frances Catchmay and Elizabeth Bulkeley. In their endeavors, they were ably aided by student research assistants working with Elaine Leong at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and Hillary Nunn at The University of Akron. More information on teaching transcription in the classroom, including sample syllabi, can be found here.

The 2015-16 academic year proves to be an exciting one for EMROC. Firstly, we’re making the big move and joining forces with Heather Wolfe and the Early Modern Manuscripts Online team at the Folger Shakespeare Library. We have been working hard over the summer to prepare for our move. On the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus, Kat Rutz and Monterey Hall, have been helping us make the transition into DROMIO by uploading images of Wellcome manuscripts and testing out the transcription interface. In early October, we will celebrate the move with an international cross-time zone transcribathon. More news on that coming soon – watch this space!

As always, the new academic year brings a new group of undergraduate and graduate student members to EMROC. This fall, nearly 70 students will be transcribing the Catchmay, Corlyon, Grenville, Bulkeley and Fanshawe recipe books on four campuses across the United States. We’re delighted to welcome Nancy Simpson-Younger and her students at Pacific Lutheran University who will be working on sections of the Corlyon manuscript as part of the course ‘The Book in Society’. Cheers to a great semester of teaching, learning and transcribing.

Finally, led by Kailan Sindelar and Breanne Weber, enterprising students on the Charlotte campus of the University of North Carolina have started the ‘Early Modern Paleography Society’. With Jennifer Munroe as their faculty advisor, EMPS members will travel to Washington D.C. to join the October transcribe-a-thon and continue to bring recipe texts to life over the coming academic year. Starting October, EMPS members will also be chronicling their adventures in transcribing on this very blog, so check-in periodically to see how they’re doing.

Welcome!

Be Elaine Leong

Organized in 2012, the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective (EMROC) is an international group of scholars and enthusiasts who are committed to improving free online access to historical archives and quality contextual information. We see the importance of linking hundreds of texts in repositories that may be thousands of miles apart, as well as creating a space for dialogue about the ideas and research generated around these texts.

This long-term project looks to include scholars, students and the general public in the preservation, transcription and analysis of recipes written in English from circa 1550-1800. The ultimate goal is an accessible and searchable corpus of recipe books currently in manuscript. By enabling users to search by ingredient, date, process, person, disease, and type, we will be able to learn a lot about how early modern people interacted with each other and with their environments.