The Digital-traditional (DT) Creation

Week 11 New Information Searching Anything Else I talked to the Senior Archivist Burak Ogreten and he showed me a few posters from the José Guerra Alemán collection. One of the items was a cinematography poster that José Guerra Alemán directed when he founded his company called CINEPERIODICO. The film was supposedly called Sangre and Esperanza (Blood and Hope) and it is based on the harassment of the G-2 (military term for the main state intelligence agency of the Government of Cuba) (Fig. 1). With the help of his other counterparts, José García and Eduardo Hernández (Guayo), he created many documentary films based on the theme of independence from colonialism and imperialism. However, his work does not seem to be mentioned on the internet. I have google searched in general and in the search box from imdb.com. His films do not appear. The historical films cannot be found so easily or many of them are hard to retrieve. Fig. 1. "Sangre Y Esperanza La Cuba de Hoy." (Cour...

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,...

Week 4: The Inside Scope of What I Do! In this internship, I am learning how to be an archivist and what to expect if I want to specialize as a digital archivist. The Special Collections staff is small compared to other institutions so they do a little bit of everything. In other words, they do not necessarily concentrate on one task forever rather they work on the preservation of a collection and at the same time, they may work on digitization for another collection. From past blogs, I have mentioned that I have been organizing materials. Video 1 gives an overview of my daily tasks and my whereabouts. As a historian, this internship has exposed me to the ins and outs of what professional archivists do before I come in and do research. I am seeing it from another perspective, the back-story. In addition, the task I am doing will help me to adapt to places where the archival institutions are not organized so I have the skills needed to navigate and find the materials I am looking for...

Week 3: VIVA CUBA! Organizing his masterpiece! I had to work with his drafts of the four encyclopedias called Cuba Infinita. He completed them in 2008. He had papers with the information and photos. Each of the pages had numbers. However, most were not in the right order. I had to use the published books as a guide to place them in order. I got to see the changes and edits he made. For instance, in Volume III and on page 208, the first photo to the left had additional words to its caption. The video presents a usual day at the Special Collections seen below. I believe his work on the encyclopedias were inspired and guided by an eight-volume encyclopedia of Cuba. The books are organized similarly to Alemán: poems; prose, theater; novels and costumbrism; history; arts and society and philosophy; prose of war; geography and folklore and education and economy; municipals. Although he divided his encyclopedias by decades, his work follows under the categories above...

Week 2: The Man behind the Research! Learning About the Man!           This week I continued to delve into the boxes. Jose Guerra Alemán was a collector of anything that dealt with Cuba’s history, literature, and other subject matters. He had a tremendous amount of his own notes from books, playwrights, and other people’s works. From box 1 to 5, I basically went through each paper written mostly in Spanish and I organized them according to their rightful category that I created-  Folder 1: Civic life where it will contain series of geography, music, literature, and history; Folder 2: Contributing works will contain series of his texts (published and unpublished), his notes, and his manuscripts of his books; Folder 3: Influences will contain series of authors, poets, and scientists that he used and inspired; Folder 3: Photos, memorabilia, letters will contain series of his professional materials (research) and personal (family-related).  I learn...

Week 1: Discovery  Landed to a New Place! Hello to all!    I have finally found an internship where I can work at. I am excited for this opportunity at the University of Central Florida Special Collections. First of, you all may be wondering who am I. Well, I am Samuel Ortiz, a graduate student from the University of Central Florida. I am in the traditional History track. In addition, I want to be able to see another perspective of what a historian can do. I mean seeing history at different perspectives from a historian angle is what scholars are supposed to do in their research. I wanted to apply and gain new skills other than an academic professor. In that case, I have always been drawn to archivist work, especially digital. My first hope was to be able to explore in that area. In reality, the staff told me that there are not many projects that follow under the title of digital, but they were willing to provide me an idea of what they already ha...