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By Nadia Clifton and Breanne WeberIn October 2015, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we started the Early Modern Paleography Society. Our faculty mentor, Dr. Jen Munroe, recently wrote a post for the Recipes Project about our founding, which inspired us to reflect on our achievements this past year and to update everyone on just how quickly EMPS has grown.EMPS has achieved many of our initial goals. We settled into a rhythm for group meetings, which doubled in size during the spring semester, and joined forces with Berlin transcriber Julia Jaegle to finish a double-keyed transcription of the “Cookbook of Timothy and Mary Cruso” (Folger ms X.d.24). Our founding officers traveled to the first annual EMROC transcribathon in October and contributed to the completion of the Winche manuscript transcription; two of them were subsequently offered internships with the Folger’s Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) database project, transcribing and vetting hundreds more pages of their manuscript collection in June. Perhaps our greatest achievement was our first EMPS transcribathon in April 2016, which hosted over 70 attendees locally and across the U.S. and resulted in a completed transcription of an anonymous 17th century cookbook (Folger ms W.b.653). For the first year of a student organization, these are amazing achievements and we are very proud.We began our second year with many new goals and EMPS continues to grow at a rapid pace. We planned from the outset to send our officers to the second annual EMROC transcribathon in November and are excited to see another project through to completion. Another of the first things we did was enlist the help of a graduated member to develop a logo, which we love and feel represents the spirit of EMPS perfectly:As we write this post, social media banners and t-shirt designs are also in the works. We have also created Facebook and Twitter pages, which we update regularly, to share more immediately what we’re up to and what we find among the pages of the texts we transcribe. And, while many of our members continue to contribute blog posts to EMROC and the Recipes Project, we also launched our own EMPS blog. In providing this platform, we encourage our members to actively contribute not just to our projects but also to the academic and social community that surrounds them.In terms of our meetings, most of our members have become confident in their paleography skills and have asked to be responsible for transcription of their own pages. Instead of spending all of our group time transcribing one page together, then, we assign pages and work collaboratively when needed. This has resulted in much more efficient transcription time, and we’re seeing the effects of this change: since our first meeting this year, we’ve triple-keyed 8 pages, double-keyed 16, and single-keyed 2 pages from the Carlyon manuscript (Folger ms V.a.388). This almost meets our single-keyed page total from meetings last year!We’ve also expanded our meetings to include other activities. During our last meeting, we used Dr. Munroe’s alembic still to distill rosewater, a process we had read about but never seen in-person. We also held a workshop on Secretary Hand for our members: we taught the alphabet and worked through the ingredients list of a recipe for a “wounde drincke” (Folger ms V.a.140). At our next meeting, we’re hosting a local herbalist, who is going to teach us about modern herbal medicine and the process of making tinctures.Spring semester will bring even more exciting EMPS activities. Experimenting with cooking is our favorite way way of bringing recipes to life, but this year, we endeavor to recreate a recipe for ink in order to try writing our own recipes the way early moderns did: from memory, and with quills. In addition, we will start transcription on a new recipe book dedicated solely to EMPS; there is nothing like the thrill of finishing a full keying of a book cover to cover. Of course, a year in EMPS wouldn’t be complete without the culmination of our transcription efforts: the Second Annual EMPS Transcribathon.Even though EMPS seems unstoppable, there is one difficulty that we are facing: recruiting members. Who could resist the enthusiasm of members, the challenge of a difficult hand, and the plain ol’ fun of transcribing during EMPS meetings? Usually no one, but our current recruits have only been English majors because that is where the organization originated. In order to reach out to students all over campus, we will be contacting faculty in departments such as history, gender studies, and nursing, to offering a short transcription workshop for their classes.Like one of the herbs used in the recipes we transcribe, EMPS is growing strong and healthy at UNC Charlotte with its amazingly dedicated officers and enthusiastic members to tend it. Many of our members will be graduating in May, however, and moving on to complete additional degrees at other universities. Although they will be missed, we know they will be carrying an EMPS seed with them, a seed that may sprout EMP Societies across the country, and perhaps even the globe.