This week was the second of my Spring internship with the project known as PRINT (People, Religion, information Networks and Travel). This week I was able to experience a welcoming onboarding process, get detailed instruction, and gain access to the database and project.
Early on Tuesday I was able to attend a meeting with Professor Beiler where I received my work plan for the semester. This document gave me clear goals and objectives that I can closely follow for the duration of my internship. It also told me what team I would be assigned to, and thus who I would be working closely with. Tuesday afternoon was the general meeting for the week where each team gave updates and instructions. While I had met all of the people working on the project briefly before, it was enlightening to hear exactly what each person and team were doing and how their work contributed to the goals of the project. The general meeting gave me a much better idea of the goals and process of the project as a whole.
I was also able to meet with my specific team after the general meeting, the AFSt team. AFSt stands for the Archives of the Frankesche Stiftungen, which is located in Halle, Germany (formerly East Germany). As mentioned in my previous blog, the PRINT project uses letters from European religious minorities in the 16th and 17th centuries, many of which are found in European Archives. The AFSt is no exception, as countless letters and resources relating to the Pietists, a German-originated religious group closely aligned with Lutheranism are housed with in its walls. The Pietists are to be the main subject of my study as I continue to work on the project.
After that welcoming onboarding process, I was to apply the meticulous instruction I had received. Last Friday I attended a transcription workshop to work on my paleography skills and received a letter I would transcribe during the week for practice. I was also instructed in the ways of German transcription through a workshop I attended on Tuesday and through detailed documents found on the projects team page. Astrid, a member of the team I was working on, was gracious enough to stay after the Tuesday meeting to give me access to the endnote database and to show me how to navigate the program. She showed me how to input the skeletal metadata, which is a task I will be doing a lot of in the future. I was extremely thankful for her additional instruction, as it cleared up a lot of the questions I had about the internship.
I used the access I was given to start perusing letters for the task Luke (my team lead) had set up for me. In order to sort letters into useful batches, I scanned keywords before reading through notes and abstracts in order to better group and understand documents. The other main task I attended to this week was my transcription practice. The work was more tedious and difficult than I expected, but I felt I was improving as I went along and overall was satisfied with the progress I made. I am incredibly thankful for how everyone educated and treated me during this last week and I look forward to continuing my transcription and batch work in the future.