Reflecting on Mapping Freedom Week Two

As we move into our second week of the Mapping Freedom REU, I will continue to share some of the things I accomplished, the knowledge I gained, and some of the factors that prevented me from doing my best work. On Monday, we first met as a group with Dr. La Beaud, Head of Library Technology at the University of Southern Mississippi, to discuss our overall project goals. Throughout the first week, my fellow students and I felt a sense of confusion surrounding what exactly we had to do for this experience, and on Monday, I learned what those goals were. By the end of this REU, each student is going present their research from the CWRGM website as well as other sources through the form of a GIS or computer science visualization. We are working to discover a topic/trend within the letters on CWRGM that we can map out using digital technology. We will also write up a rough draft of a scholarly scientific-style article. After going through our process and discussing our issues, it felt great to accomplish a group Q&A. Earlier in the day, we also had the opportunity to visit the McCain Library and Archives to learn about archival practices and tour the various collections in the building. I learned much more about how a large university archive runs, and it was great to be back in an environment that I am accustomed to. On Tuesday, we met with Dr. Lindsey Peterson, an adjunct professor at the University of Sioux Falls, to examine the inner workings of CWRGM and the best ways to conduct research on marginalized communities. Being able to learn more about the database that we are using, as well as how to use the downloadable data, was definitely a new experience for me, but I look forward to exploring new areas of history through these tactics. On Wednesday, we got to once again sit down with Dr. La Beaud and discuss digitization and the best practices she employs as the Director of the Mississippi Digital Library. We heard more about what the MDL is, its makeup regarding participating institutions, and how they work to spread digitization knowledge across the country with the hopes of preserving intellectual content. We continued our focus on digitization by working at the USM Digital Lab, where we spoke with staff about how they digitize documents. I even got to continue practicing by scanning a few large posters and playing around with scanner settings. On Thursday, we dove deep into the world of metadata and how the CWRGM and the MDL practice writing and presenting quality metadata to viewers. Metadata is not my favorite part of the Digital Humanities so this lesson was a little bit of a struggle, but I did feel that I got a lot more clarification to some of my questions. Dr. La Beaud went through an extensive PowerPoint where we went over the top 12 most common mistakes when writing metadata. They are:

1. Improper punctuation.

2. Improper capitalization.

3. Improper spacing.

4. Missing information.

5. Incorrect values.

6. Mis-mapped elements.

7. Inconsistencies.

8. Date formatting.

9. Not assuming unique identifiers.

10. Not using controlled vocabulary.

11. No documentation or outdated documentation.

12. Not having an regular evaluation or remedey process.

And lastly, on Friday we first met with individuals from the USM graduate school to talk about the process of applying to a masters or PhD program. This lesson was interesting because of the new perspectives that were brought up. I did not know much about different aspects like working in an assistanship role (I believe that is one of the proper terms) as well as what to put on a CV vs a resume.

To discuss some of the areas that slowed my learning down, I want to first mention the confusing nature of the Library of Congress Database. I was looking through the footnotes of a historical report on Ship Island from 1984, and tried to find the primary sources listed that the author linked to LOC. Their search/advanced search system was not my favorite and I did not find any links to the information that I was looking for. Secondly, I am not made for the Mississippi weather. I dont know how anyone survives down here but I know that I am meant to be inside as much as I can, even if our rooms are a bit chilly. Lastly, I think that I can be a bit of a hinderance to my learning abilities. As I continue to find documents for my research topic, I keep going down more and more rabbit holes, which is leading to a growing Zotero collection. I think I need to slow down a bit and focus on the CWRGM letters before I jump too far in.

Overall, I am happy with the accomplishments I made this week, which also included finding a newspaper from Lousiana that was printed in French from the 1984 Ship Island report footnotes. This was a find that I found pretty late in the evening which further added to my growing excitement for this project going forward.