Prestigious award given to project about Anne Lister's diaries

The award is designed to recognise and celebrate the outstanding work involving volunteers within the archive sector and to promote good practice in volunteering.

WYAS’s Anne Lister Diary Digitisation and Transcription Project is a ground-breaking project which set out to transcribe the diaries of Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, 1806-1840.

Anne was the inspiration for the BBC drama ‘Gentleman Jack’ written by BAFTA Award winning Sally Wainwright which aired in 2019.

The project was launched in July 2019 and is an ongoing project which is expected to require an estimated 16,000 to 20,000 volunteer hours.

Anne’s diaries, which consist of around five million words, cover all aspects of her life in intimate detail; her relationships with women, her business dealings, estate management, education, and her personal health and well-being. They also provide a wealth of information about politics, business, religion, education, science, travel, local and national events, medicine and health.

The diaries have the potential to be a significant resource for a wide range of researchers on a huge number of topics and, consequently, were inscribed in UNESCO’s UK Memory of the World Register in recognition of their substantial cultural significance. However, the true extent of Anne’s diaries remains hidden in her abbreviation filled handwriting and her coded ‘crypt-hand’.

WYAS wanted to make Anne’s diaries increasingly accessible and extend their world-wide impact by making complete transcripts available on their online catalogue. To do this, they engaged more than 150 volunteer ‘Code Breakers’ globally to help transcribe the diaries. WYAS created a Twitter hashtag – #AnneListerCodeBreaker – which in turn created an active social media community where the volunteer ‘Code Breakers’ can share advice on transcribing, stories from the diaries, and their own personal and emotional interactions with Anne Lister, as well as engage a wider audience of potential Anne Lister researchers and volunteers.

The transcription project webpages have received 26,000 views since July 2019 as part of 131,000 views of the online Anne Lister exhibition since its launch in April 2019.

Dan Sudron, Calderdale Archivist at West Yorkshire Archive Service, comments: “We are delighted to have been awarded the ARA Archive Volunteer Award 2020. We have over 150 volunteers who have actively engaged online in what is an exciting and challenging transcription project, and we have been amazed by their enthusiasm and dedication.

“Many of our ‘Code Breakers’ have a personal and emotional connection with Anne’s story and the project has enabled them to interact with an active community of fellow transcribers. They will be thrilled to learn about this award. It’s a fantastic acknowledgement of their hard work and a great recognition of the huge significance of this important archive collection and the power of archives in general to bring people together.”

Councillor Les Shaw, Chair of the West Yorkshire Joint Services Joint Committee, said: “The Anne Lister transcription project has been ground-breaking in its innovative use of archives and remote online volunteers. It has enabled a large number of volunteers to work on opening up access, online, to an internationally significant collection in a way that has not been achieved before. We are very grateful for the ongoing dedication and hard work of all those volunteers who are at the heart of this prestigious national award which we are very honoured to have received.”

Sally Bevan, Secretary of the ARA’s Volunteer Committee, said: “The judges’ panel really liked this project because of its clear focus, and how well planned it is. It is an excellent example of a remote volunteer project which enables both local and international engagement.

"It has attracted an audience who may never have used archives before, as well as raising the profile of the archive service. The project allows individuals to learn more about Anne and interact with her story on an emotional level. It also enables WYAS to engage with a large online community both locally and internationally, in addition to encouraging diversity.

"The value of the volunteers in the project was particularly strong. We are excited to see the development of the project as it continues.”

The award is organised by the Volunteer Committee of ARA and sponsored by the ARA, the National Archives (UK) and sector partners. The ARA is the lead professional body for archivists, archive conservators and records managers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It has more than 2,000 members.