The Trials and Running of Tina and Jasmine's Trial Run

         On October 14, 2013, Tina and I went to the ISS-media lab for our oral history trial run. I was the interviewee, and Tina was the interviewer and production manager. To prepare, I went through my personal archive and chose three documents that I wanted to scan. What is interesting is that after we conducted the interview, I found that the three original documents did not reflect the topics that were covered during the interview. I went back through my personal archive and chose three different items, including a picture of me harvesting wild rice,

an itinerary from my semester in the People’s Republic of China with the School Year Abroad program, and a school newspaper, which contained an editorial piece I had written. I found that these three items better reflected the topics which we discussed in the interview. This experience as  the interviewee leads me to believe that having access to potential questions prior to the oral history interview helps the interviewee to collect their thoughts and experiences and gives her or him the opportunity to organize her or his personal archive in order of relevance to the topics to be discussed. Going through my personal archive, I found many items that I would want preserved and can understand how difficult it will be to choose archival items to digitize for our interviewee, Mary Luevanos. I also found that there was some information about place names or people’s names that I struggled to remember on the spot. This experience has shown me how important prior research is to help the interviewee remember dates and names and why having the questions prior to the interview would be helpful.

            The trial run has been very instrumental in my understanding of the dedication it takes to engage in such a project. The experience showed Tina and I the amount of time and resources it takes to conduct one short interview and digitize three items from a personal archive.  The week prior to the interview, Tina and I scheduled a time to use one of the collaboration rooms and to reserve a camera, tripod, microphone, and voice recorder. Collecting the items from the media lab was time-consuming as we had to verify to that all of the items we needed were in their respective cases. After checking out the equipment, we found setting up the equipment and testing their functionality to also be time-consuming. We discovered that it is important to factor in how much time it takes to set up and test the equipment into the scheduled interview time so as not to take away from the actual interview. Once the interview started, we realized how quickly the time flies. We initially intended the oral history interview to be five minutes long, but it quickly developed into a twenty minute interview. I can see why follow-up interview appointments might be necessary since all the questions may not be covered in the initial interview. After the interview, we had to wrangle up all the equipment, load the video onto our hard drives, and be sure to be out of the room because we were only scheduled for two hours. I’m glad that we were able to practice uploading the video onto the hard drive because there is definitely a difference between having it explained to you and actually doing it.

            Although the interview required a bit of time, I believed that scanning the documents and uploading them to the digital archive would be quicker. I discovered that I was wrong. The scanning experience showed me why it is important to be prepared lest you run out of time. I had forgotten to bring my computer and without communicating to Tina, I hoped that Tina would bring hers. Unfortunately, we lost valuable time during our scanning appointment because Tina was kind enough to run back to her house for her computer. Uploading the software to Tina’s computer took even more time, and we were only able to scan and upload one of the archival items before I had to leave. As I had many things come up later in the week and into the weekend, I was unable to return to finish the scanning and have to schedule another time to upload the software and scan and archive the other two documents. I think we learned how important it is to be in communication with your team and have extra equipment available so that everything can be completed on time. I believe that the scanning process will be much shorter now that the software will be uploaded to both of our computers. Tina and I have exchanged telephone numbers so that we can be in better communication with each other. The trial run has shown me how the Chicana Por Mi Raza digital archive project is truly a labor of love since it requires so much time and preparation.

My daughter, Shayla, on her first Halloween. She's seven years old now :)