My 9th Week as a digital archive assistant for PRINT has come to an end. This was an incredibly productive week in which I did a bit of data entry, improved skills , and learned quite a bit about my future responsibilities
I spent most of my time this week doing data entry in Endnote. My main task was transferring the number of files of each document into the pages section of the Endnote metadata. There was a .txt file in the AFSt teams folder that contained the information for hundreds of these documents, which is where I got the information from. I went through all of the batches on the Endnote, using ctrl-f on the .txt doc to find the file numbers before transferring them over. There were quite a few documents that I couldn’t find listed on the .txt document, but I still made sure to document their IDs in the Endnote. I did this to find out exactly what was missing from the .txt and to transfer this knowledge to the rest of the team. Many of the documents I couldn’t find stemmed from simple typos, while others seemed altogether absent.
As usual, I attended both the English and German transcription workshops this week. I now feel incredibly comfortable in transcribing German, and believe I would be able to do quite a bit of transcription independently. My English continues to improve, especially as I become more familiar with certain archaic words and the unique handwritings of the different authors.
The team meeting this week was quite interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it took place in a new location: The Dean’s office conference room in the College of Arts and Humanities. This meeting place was quite spacious and was most effective thanks to the many television screens around the entire room which showed the content we were to be following. This was a great reprieve from having to look across the entire room to see conent or having to pull it up myself. The meeting was quite enlightening to me, as we began to have more conversations relating to Linked Open Data procedures, which will soon be essential to my work. There was plenty of time for questions and clarifications, and I believe that it was decided that there will be Linked Open data workshop soon, which will be help me tremendously towards a greater understanding of my new responsibilities. We also got to see another update on the mapping project, which had made major strides since the last time I had seen it. Its fascinating to see how different parts of the team collaborate with people of many different disciplines in order to create something more meaningful than the sum of its parts.
Overall this was a productive week that helped me prepare greatly for my foray into Linked Open data. The information and the skills I have learned so far will be helpful for my understanding of next weeks workshop and my future responsibilities. I am so very excited to start this new journey to proficiency in a new and valuable skill!