We’re delighted to announce an exciting new phase of the ‘Material Culture of Wills, England 1540-1790’ project – the launch of our Zooniverse site. We hope that the Zooniverse ‘crowdsourcing’ platform will allow us to involve hundreds of new volunteers in the project who will work with us to transcribe our sample of 25,000 English wills made between 1540 and 1790. We’re looking for participants to help us check and correct automatically generated transcriptions.
Our Zooniverse volunteers are able to hone and improve their palaeography skills at the same time as making a contribution to the success of a cutting-edge research project. They can contribute as much or as little time as is convenient, and they can fit transcription tasks in whenever they have a moment – on the bus or waiting for the kettle to boil. If you are bored of Wordle but like the challenge of puzzling over words, then the Wills Project is just the thing!
To get started, head over to our Zooniverse site: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/hjsmith/the-material-culture-of-wills-england-1540-1790
You can also find out more information on our blog https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcultureofwills/2024/10/16/the-wills-project-calls-for-volunteers/ and the ‘Volunteers’ section of our website https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcultureofwills/volunteers/.
For a quick-start video guide to our Zooniverse site, and other instructional videos, you can also take a look at our new YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialWills