My Favorite Course: Palaeography
By Cheryl Levy, Student The Palaeography: Reading & Understanding Historical Documents course is compulsory for almost all certificates, and with good reason. My initial expectation for this course, was that it would be mostly learning how to write various old scripts, using the pen and workbook provided. To my surprise, this aspect was only included in the first module. The detailed course notes and excellent companion workbook will stretch your knowledge and transcription skills. The extensive, customized exercises are a valuable component of this learning experience. The course description states: A number of topics linked to palaeography are covered to ensure participants have sufficient background to tackle unfamiliar documents that span the past five hundred years. The primary goal involves transcribing the unfamiliar writing in old documents to the modern day hand. A secondary objective is to provide the student with a feeling of success and achievement when new skills are learned. As Britain had a major influence on the cosmopolitan development of North America, examples will be taken from British and Canadian resources. Canadian resources will focus on The Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, which are British in origin, and are now held at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg. These materials reflect the profound influence of British language, culture and economics on the development of North America. Module 1 featured practical handwriting exercises, and a brief introduction on the relevant materials required for experimenting with scripts. Website URLs were given for a variety of specific scripts and alphabets, as well as tutorials and resources for further study. I have purchased one of the recommended books, Reading Early American Handwriting by Kip Sperry and Margaret C. Klein, and I have found it very applicable for my Colonial New England research. Personally, I love transcribing and the challenge to “solve the puzzle,” but this course explored so much more than merely deciphering the code for unfamiliar letters. As with all research, we need to understand the records we are examining. Analysis and evaluation involve more than simply recording the words of a sentence, we need to comprehend the context. As so many terms are no longer used, their original meaning may be lost to the one reading the text. Even after we have identified all of the letters, we must be familiar with the archaic terms to appreciate what has been recorded. Module 2 investigated Early Forms of Speed Writing with…