Print Internship Week 1

Hi all, I’m very excited to finally get started working with the PRINT team as the intern for this semester.  I volunteered with the project last semester while taking a colonial American history class with Dr. Beiler. I enjoyed the transcriptions projects we were assigned and wanted to do more.  They were like a puzzle that just needed to be solved, but I had some of the pieces to start to make sense of it– even if I perhaps put some in the wrong place or upside down occasionally.

And then I met Abigail.  Well, I didn’t really meet her.  She’s been dead for about three hundred years now.  But I feel as though I met her through the letters of hers that I read.  I wanted to know more information about her so I began researching her more for my assignment, but also for personal enjoyment.  She was a fascinating woman from colonial America who shattered a lot of my preconceived notions of the life of women during that time.  She helped run her father’s business as a teenager and had three engagements, two of which were called off (one of those being because she decided that he didn’t love her enough and wasn’t serious enough about life).  I really enjoyed working on this project.  It gave me a first hand look about the lives of people during the beginning of America.

This is especially fascinating because it is the part of the history that I am most interested in. My main interest lies in witchcraft and the metaphysical phenomenons and hysterics that happened in both England and colonial America and how that influenced society.  I also enjoy learning about the role of women during this time and researching how they contributed to society, since so much is written about men or at least from a man’s perspective.

This first week was an interesting one.  Being that is is the beginning of the semester, I spent time trying to get a good footing on what my expectations are and getting a good lay of the land with the project requirements.  I also worked on a couple transcriptions.

So what will I be doing this semester?

Well, first off, I will be meeting with the PRINT team every week to discuss the group’s progress and make a plan for the coming week. I will be meeting with Dr. Beiler as needed for internship-specific questions and assignments.  I will also be assisting Dr. Beiler’s History and Historians and Atlantic History classes with their transcription projects, assisting in workshops and providing feedback and coaching on the transcription process.

But my main work is going to be working with the Linked Open Database, researching a lot of the people associated with the PRINT project and filling in gaps and information, fleshing out what we know of these people.  While doing this, I will be creating and following a template for short biographies with the eventual goal of being integrated in to the website when hovering over a person.