transcribe this! #transcribeVCU #folgerEMMO

November 17, 2015 Claire M. L. Bourne

One of the most popular pages at the VCU-Folger EMMO transcribathon: MS V.a.103, 38r, Folger Shakespeare Library (via LUNA)

Anyone who doubts that extra-curricular humanities programming can draw a crowd should have been at VCU's James Branch Cabell Library last Friday, November 13, where upwards of 100 people—most of them undergraduates—spent the afternoon transcribing seventeenth-century manuscripts for the Folger Shakespeare Library's crowd-sourced and soon-to-be web-accessible Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) project.

As the Folger's Curator of Manuscripts Heather Wolfe reminded us in her opening remarks, the ability to read hand-written historical documents informs how we understand our cultural, social, political, religious, and economic inheritance. Wolfe stressed that manuscripts didn't die out with the rise of printing, Instead, manuscript production flourished. Printed texts were "just the tip of the textual iceberg." What would happen, she asked, if more people could read the manuscripts that are only currently accessible to a select few with special paleography training? What would we be able to learn about our past?

Adopt-A-Book Assignment: PART 3

November 6, 2015 Claire M. L. Bourne

The Works of Shakespeare, personal collection — *The Works of Shakespeare*, personal collection

The students in my Shakespeare in Context course have just embarked on Part 3 of their semester-long Adopt-A-Book Assignment. This third—and final—installment asks them to engage with a very short passage of the playtext as it appears in their adopted edition and in the relevant Folger Shakespeare Library edition we've been using in class. This part of the assignment builds off of Part 1 and Part 2, which invited students to describe the material features of their adopted book before contextualizing one of those features via original research.

TRANSCRIBATHON! #transcribeVCU #folgerEMMO

October 25, 2015 Claire M. L. Bourne

Detail of V.a.103, fol. 3v, Folger Shakespeare Library.

I will be celebrating VCU's very good luck this Friday the 13th when the Folger Shakespeare Library's Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) project team visits Richmond to lead a transcribathon for faculty, students, staff, representatives from local institutions, and interested members of the general public.

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