Week 10 of my internship with the PRINT Project was quite fun as I got to tackle a few new tasks. Since I finished entering the number of pages for each document into the skeletal metadata last Thursday, I was able to start working on research for Linked Open data and the receiver locations from the documents.
For my Linked Open Data research this week, I began by finding a few names from the database that I was already somewhat familiar with. I figured since I had previously read letters pertaining to these people, it was a good jumping off point for research. Following the instructions in the teams, I tried to find the existing authority files for these people. I searched on the Library of Congress website, Wikidata, and the website of The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) for pre-existing authority files that matched the individuals I was looking for. I began by simply searching for the names, but often had to get more specific, trying alternate spellings and checking the dates on the authority files to make sure the dates matched up. Some of the people didn’t have authority files in every database, but I was able to find at least 2 for each. I then placed the permalinks into the Persons and Places directory spreadsheet located on teams. After conducting a bit more research, I highlighted and turned the entries yellow to indicate that more work was needed. I hope to return to this research as soon as possible!
In our team meeting, Casey gave us a great presentation on Linked Open Data that gave me great insight into the research process. She taught us about a bunch of great sources and methods that I was previously unfamiliar with that certainly will improve my research in the future. At the end of the general meeting, Professor Beiler discussed priorities with the AFSt team, where it was decided we would shift our focus to entering receiver place names into the Endnote skeletal metadata.
For the rest of the week, I dedicated my time to that very task. Since the information was not included in the Groeschl metadata, I had to carefully go through the transcripts to find out receiver places. When the information was not found there, I would then check other letters to try to get more context, and if that was a dead end I would conduct outside research. Especially helpful to my outside research were the mini biographies on the Francke Foundations websites. These gave me valuable insight into the locations of different people at different points throughout the 17th and 18th century. Despite my method, there were still a few documents where the location was unclear. For these documents I would simply enter [unknown] into the skeletal metadata and move on.
As always, there were two transcription workshops this week. I have advanced to the point where I feel like there are many words and sentences I can read on sight, while previously I had only seen letters. It is very fulfilling to see how I have improved across the semester, though I still have quite a while to go before I am proficient as many of the other PRINT members.