Week 3 Changes…
During this week I learned that the woman I was working with for my internship would be taking another position at another museum. I was introduced to the head historian for the Polk County History Center and we discussed what I had done so far and what I would be doing in the future. We have set a weekly meeting, whereas I would come in and update on a random day during the week.
I have moved through a lot of the albums of documents already. By taking pictures of them and then assembling them into a PDF document that I can flip through, I have saved myself lots of time, not just for this internship but for the future of my Polk County historical studies. When I am finished, I will essentially have all the records that they have and I won’t have to rely on working hours to view documents. The Anthropic AI Claude does a great job at reading and transcribing, although it is not always perfect. With the word documents it produces I can easily search for individuals and if i create a project with Claude and upload all the folders then i can ask for every article that mentions Jacob Summerlin for example and it will pull every one for me and make them into a larger document that i can read.
Of course just having isolated articles is not good historian’s work since things need context but I find that the way I research is by concentric circles but going outward instead of inward. I focus on the subject and try to mine all the historical documents that are available to capture a snapshot of an event or individual to understand the framework of the thing and then I go back and situate it within the context of the surrounding world. I did this with the book I wrote about the origins of the American Mafia and it was a lot easier than trying to understand Antebellum through Jazz Age New Orleans first. So utilizing the technology available, I will be able to pull all the information about criminal proceedings in the courthouse or the development of the city around it or the judges who presided over cases inside. This will allow me to create a database for each subject that can be used in the future to make fresh new tours or add color to existing ones when needed without having to start from scratch.
Next week I will be continuing to mine the research library and start constructing the administrative website where the information will be housed and updated.
