Double Encode, or rather Dublin Code

Oh, and it is Dublin, New Hampshire rather than Dublin, Ireland.

On Friday, Rob and Danielle will be putting the final say in whether we use Dublin Code (no, not Double Encode) or MODS for the Obrebski papers metadata. Dublin Code appears to be rather stringent in the categories set for identifiers in the meta data, though it is what the archives department here at UM has customarily used. MODS is a new adventure, though in terms of coding efficiency, flexibility of identifiers and how the digital archive corresponds with XML in future web-base exhibits, it may be more advantageous in this arena. I am looking forward to whatever guidance they can provide in regards to what direction to go in.

In the meantime, I am curious to figure out whether Obrebski’s categorization will fit better in the concrete metadata structure or within the WordPress blog categories. Also, the photographs that are part of the collection were scanned as really high resolution *.tif images that I can’t seem to load fast enough to really page through. In order to implement this part of the collection, and to use some of the photographs for the blog presentation itself it will be crucial to create some smaller standards that will be web-friendly.

This is what I looked up today

Protoplast: first organized body of a species

Ethos: Accustomed place, character

Sui generis: “of it’s own kind”

Eccleciastic: Minister, priest / Cleric

Eschatology: a part of the theology and philosophy concerned with the final events in the history of the world; a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or ultimate destiny of humankind.

Substratum: (linguistics) a language which influences another one while that second language supplants it

Amorphous: lacking definite form – having structural components that are not clearly differentiated

Exonerate: To clear of accusation, free from guilt or blame; to relieve from obligation/duty/task

Aggregate: taking all units as a whole

Sectarian: Limited in character or scope

Aritualism: ?

Hermetically: completely sealed; impervious to outside interference or influence

Altruism: the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others (selflessness)

Blastoff.

My first full week in SCUA started off slow but really mounted to a pleasing bit of discovery on Wednesday. Monday I spent over five hours reading documents of family interviews, observations on behavior and census information. The Obrebski papers encapsulate the very methodical process he used as an ethnographer – it is by starting to understand this process that I am finding a way to tell the story of the two Jamaican communities studied in 1947-48. In my research methods course this semester we are using a “Guide to Writing About Psychology”, at the begining of each section is a helpful quote on the topic, for instance:

“Discussion sections of published articles exhibit science at work”

(Norman H. Anderson, 2001)

Obrebski’s discussion of his Jamaican survey was never fully published, and in this sense a large part of the scientific story is missing. It is here that I can attempt to tell the remainder of the story with the pieces that we have intact. By using the Jamaican papers as a dialog to communicate with other researchers and interested neophytes we will experience science at work. In one of the boxes I was examining on Wednesday the family interview documents were categorized by “Poor”, “Average”, and “Prosperous”. I attempted to get a grasp of characteristics defining the class structures, thinking that I would need to state parameters for a piece of anthropological science, however at almost the back of the folder was a handwritten document labeled “Definitions”. Obrebski had left a juicy piece if science, sharing what he determined to be the necessary characteristics for economic classification in the study. My hope is that this will enable me to go one step further in the story of Obrebski in Jamaica.

 

“The Many Branches of Understanding” (Spring 2007)
W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst

This week in NIFF

This week in NIFF has been totally hopping! If anyone were to ask, “What is the primary function of an intern?” I would describe it as the aptitude to make things happen. As a close friend of mine says, “If they give you popsicle sticks and rubber bands telling you to make a sports car, you better bring them a sports car”. Now, I’m not going to list under skills on my resume that I can get things done, but it is an invaluable practice to be set on a task and not have any contact withe person in charge until the project is complete, and it is the practice that builds the confidence to do it over, and over, and over…

Today I sent out press releases to the local college and university media departments and set up the Fall volunteer meeting. (If you are local, check out the “Get Involved” section of the NIFF website – this festival is built on volunteers!) This entailed following up on a number of volunteer inquiry’s, updating my volunteer database and mailing list, figuring out the directions to our quirky yet quite functional office in the InResonance building located in the industrial hub of Northampton. We have a newly recruited head projectionist and a photographer to take snazzy pictures of filmmakers. To follow up on the college media I hope to get some student journalist coverage of the festival, maybe even someone to interview the director and other people involved before-hand!

Jamaica, here I come.

Tomorrow I start my first full week of interning with Special Collections and University Archives on the 25th floor of the W.E.B Du Bois library at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. At first I was worried about not knowing quite enough code right away (though still excited about learning the details as it is why I became interested in library science in the first place), however the first phase of research for the exhibit is nothing of the sort. There are a good number of boxes full of typed and handwritten material from Obrebski’s 1947-1948 stay in Jamaica which I will need to know quite well before I can move to the second phase of choosing representative material to put in the digital collection.

Last week I started by getting to know the one box of negatives and prints we have from Obrebski, which gave me a helpful visual to connect with the community descriptions. My academic history has mostly included communication and psychology (with a little sociology) for social studies, and this is my first experience with anthropological findings. One of the most exciting findings was a document of probability calculations regarding the ratio of landowners in the lower economic populations considered in the survey. This was something I could recognize thanks to my statistics for psychology course last semester – it will be intriguing to see what other pieces of research I will be able to relate to my own studies.

In the long term, a family friend of mine is moving to the Montego Bay area of Jamaica for two years to look after a family estate and it looks like I will have the opportunity to visit this January. It will be great to see how contemporary Jamaica relates to the social structures and environment from the 1940’s that I will be examining this semester through the Obrebski papers.