(Apologies for cross-posting, please share.)
On December 4th, staff from the Folger Shakespeare Library's Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) Project ( http://collation.folger.edu/2013/11/emmo-early-modern-manuscripts-online/) and the University of Pennsylvania Library's Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts (www.library.upenn.edu/kislak/) will be on hand to introduce participants (and anyone who happens to wander by) to the art of transcribing English manuscripts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Transcribathon will take place in the Class of 1978 Orrery Pavillion in the Kislak Center on the 6th floor of Penn's Van Pelt Library, 3420 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA.
Transcribathon website: http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/Transcribathon/
If you like puzzles and/or are interested in the early modern period then you should consider joining the transcribathon! Work by yourself or with friends. You might stay for just a few lines, or get hooked and transcribe an entire piece.
Early Modern Manuscripts Online, or EMMO, is an IMLS-funded three-year project that will ultimately provide scholars and the general public with convenient web access to a searchable database of transcriptions and digital images of a substantial number of the Folger Shakespeare Library's English manuscripts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: letters, diaries, wills, coats of arms, literary works, recipe books, miscellanies, and more. The first phase of the project consists of creating and gathering transcriptions, in order to create a corpus that is then vetted for accuracy and consistency.