The Digital-traditional (DT) Creation

Week 10 Finishing Up Clean Up and Put Things in Order! I am revising and editing my bio on Jose Guerra Alemán. I need to make another version without the images so it can be uploaded onto the UCF library special collection page under Jose Guerra Alemán. I am finishing the inventory page for this collection. Beforehand, I started a copy, but I did not quite like the way it came out so I redid the format of the inventory. I also am looking back at each box and recording the folders I created and some of the items that were in the boxes. I know in each box there are similar themes and have the same Folder names so eventually, those Folders would be combined with the same box. But for now, I think this is a good start. The important thing is the staff knows what each box contains because the items are mostly in Spanish. I also want to include a document of all the changes Jose Guerra Alemán made from his old draft to the final draft of his Cuba Infinita  encyclopedias. I am th...

Week 9 Wrapping it Up Finalizing the Alemán Family's story I have continued with the biography on Jose Guerra Alemán. Under the grant for the Veterans Legacy Program, I have used the skills that I have learned there to help me write this biography. I was exposed to see my colleagues' format and structure of their veteran's biography. I will soon be done. I just need to find a document where one of Jose Braulio Alemán's wife, Maria Ivonne Dupuy, wrote a letter where she mentioned her husband's role as Minister of Education and expresses her perspective when he worked in that position. However, I am struggling in finding it again. I also need to revise my footnotes and to include a caption to a few photos I uploaded with the biography. Looking back to the primary sources such as photos and letters, I have been able to connect certain things like who's who. In the Alemán's family, they had nicknames for many of the members. For instance, Jose Guerra Alemá...

Week 8 Putting Together All Gathered Information Connecting the Dots! Today is a successful day. I finished looking and organizing the 12 boxes of this collection. I have learned a lot in understanding the process of archiving new materials. I learned that it is tedious work in the archiving business, especially when I dealt with another language and I was the only one who could understand it. It helps when you are stuck and can ask someone for reference or to double check your findings, but in this case, I was on my own for the most part when it came to understanding the Spanish language. I did have my family that I asked for help in deciphering what the cursive word was in the primary source, for instance; however, it was up to me to do the task well and make sure I translate what the boxes contained so when other reviewers review them again they will know what each box contains. I am now working on Jose Guerra Alemán's biography. I am taking the primary sources I have foun...

Week 7 The Tree of Life What Fell Off the Tree.... After I organized the volumes of encyclopedias that Jose Guerra Alemán published, I continued to go work backward with the boxes. In Box 11, I found a handwritten letter from Jose Guerra Alemán's Aunt Noemi Alemán and she is the sister of his mother, Herminia Alemán. This letter contained the history of Jose Braulio Alemán's parents and Maria Valdes' parents. It was all what Noemi knew and what she was told by her other family members. The letter is six pages long that also includes personal comments such as how much she loves Jose Guerra Alemán and how he should take care of himself (Fig.1). I was excited to find this piece of document because a couple of days ago I started to build Alemán's family tree so I could get a better idea of who he was and to help me write his biography. I want to include as many primary sources as I can. However, I struggled to read the letter because it was in her point of view. I would...

Week 6: New Discovery The Pot of Gold This week I wanted to step back and take some time and investigate on Jose Guerra Alemán and his family. Beforehand, I believe I rushed that process. I went in familysearch.org and I was able to find a few new pieces of information. I found a temporary immigration card to Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) (Fig.1). On the card, it had his full name, Jose Ramon Guerra Aleman. At least in the Spanish culture, people include their father’s last name and their mother’s maiden name next to each other. In this case, Guerra comes from his father’s side and his name was Jose Guerra. While Aleman comes from his mother’s side and her name was Herminia Aleman according to the document below. Another information I found out was that he put journalism as his profession and he could have gone to Brazil for a story. Fig. 1. Jose Ramon Guerra Alemán Immigration Card, Brazil. (Courtesy of Familysearch.org .) As a historian and scholar, one must know how...

Week 5: The Battle Continues At the archives, I have been doing the same routine. I have been organizing and archiving one box to the next. However, I happen to change it a bit. I usually go and work on the next box chronologically, but this week I decided to go backwards and start with box 12. I found more draft pages of his four- volume encyclopedias. I needed to put them in order accordingly to how it appears to the final draft. This task seems easy to do, but it takes time when the draft pages are not in order or not all in the same place. I would imagine someone thinking why I would I care to place a draft together when the final copies of Aleman’s encyclopedias are available. As a historian, I feel the need to preserve the drafts of a manuscript or book because it can be the gateway of the writer’s thoughts. One person can just see changes on a page, but there is more meaning. The slightest change can mean the writer was detailed and thought-provoking. Academically speaking,...