This week I spent my time finishing up the research for my presentation for next week’s Tuesday meeting. This presentation is designed to compare and contrast the various religious groups discussed in the P.R.I.N.T. Project so that others working on the project have a general understanding. The idea is that I will present the information to everyone, so that they know what they’re looking at, but they would have access to the PowerPoint that simplifies a lot of the complexities among the various groups. I made sure to list more of the information that is not so easy to google, which tends to be an issue for a few of the groups I was researching.
One of the strange issues I came across was that one of the books I was reading on the pietists subscribed to a certain set of beliefs on their origins that are not universally accepted. So, when I presented what I had on the pietists to Dr. Beiler, she said that while she understands where that line of thinking comes from, when it comes to what is actually being described in the project, she wanted me to focus on a different, more commonly accepted origin of the pietists.
This week, I also started fixing some of my previously renamed files after the addition of a new protocol. The protocol in question addresses how to rename documents that had that were already accompanied by a translation. Now when renaming a translated document, we have to include a code for the language the original document has been translated to. Unfortunately, in the database that I am working in, the abstract for the letters and other documents does not list which languages both the original document and its translation are written in. This means that I have to learn to differentiate between various languages that I do not know how to read including, German, Dutch, Swiss German, and more, either through script differences or context given in the abstract. For example, if the abstract says a letter was from Bern, it is usually safe to assume that the letter will likely be in German.
However, moving forward this will likely require me to learn more about the geography mentioned in the documents I am looking at, as well as knowing the different titles and names used by different countries and regions to give me added context when determining what I am looking at. While this will certainly complicate the renaming process, I understand that it will simplify later exports into databases like Endnote, a process that is inherently more complicated. This has also given me the chance to collaborate more with my team members as they have been offering me advice on differentiating language scripts. It will just take some getting used to.
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