Wed, 12/21/2022 - 10:54am Helena Clarkson

As we are about to head into the holidays, we thought it would be nice to share with you what we have been doing behind the scenes at MAPP.

We have been working on uploading more content to the site; there are now over 80 archive folders to browse and research.  Featuring correspondence relating to the works of Virginia and Leonard Woolf and a whole host of modernist authors including Vita Sackville-West, E. M. Forster, C. H. B. Kitchen, Ahmed Ali, William Plomer and many more. You can search through our list of authors here

With more folders digitised and published on the site, it also means that there has been plenty more for our transcribers to transcribe. Over the months our 'army of knowledge workers' as one volunteer called the group, have been diligently working away to provide over 500 transcriptions for the MAPP site. 

We have celebrated various milestones along the way, last summer we celebrated our first 100 items with biscuits...

 

We also recently found that one of our volunteers has given over 100 hours of their time!

 

We are very fortunate that the volunteers have been so engaged and have shared their thoughts with us about the project, either as part of our team workshops or through sharing tweets. A lot of the volunteers have been prompted to either re-discover Virginia Woolf, or to read her for the first time, but all have found the subject matter fascinating:

 

"One of the most interesting things for me about transcribing is the stories that each of the folders has shown me.  For example, the first letter I transcribed was from Leonard Woolf to J M Keynes in which he asks him if he will be motoring to Charleston which I have now discovered was the modernist home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.  And the correspondence in the T. S Eliot Wasteland folder relates to a loan of Leonard's first edition for an exhibition, following which it is returned damaged, much to his annoyance!"

 

"I've thoroughly enjoyed the experience of transcribing documents for the project. Most of all, the fact that it has been remote, meaning that I could transcribe at any time, has meant that I've felt really accommodated...This, along with the fact that I find the subject matter to be fascinating - especially being able to learn more about the inner workings of the Hogarth Press and its relationship with its clients and other businesses - has meant that I genuinely enjoyed the work, which actually didn't really feel like work at all. I really feel like I've been able to contribute to academia and, more specifically, the field of 20th-century literature, even if it has been in a small way"

 

One of our volunteers, Lawrence Jones has also been tweeting his discoveries through transcribing. Be sure to follow along with us on Twitter to find out more about our transcription progress...

Screenshotted tweets

Below is a snap of a few members of our dedicated team at a small in-person event where our remote volunteers saw the physical material for the first time.

We wish to take this opportunity to thank all the volunteers for all their hard work! The transcriptions added make sure the letters are searchable, adding more valuable information to our growing database.

 

We will be uploading more folders in the New Year, exploring different publishing collections, and adding more transcriptions!

Volunteers in Special Collections reading room looking at papers