As Maya, noted, right now the whole group is putting in time entering the metadata of Lakeland’s Omeka collection. The metadata coverage is erratic, to say the least, with very spotty coverage of traditional Dublin Core categories and inconsistent terminology. Perhaps the most difficult and frustrating part of data entry is keeping myself from “improving” the data too much. We have agreed as a group to add short descriptions, to correct obvious typos, and to note our additions and edits by using italics. Beyond these minor improvements, I sense that even within my own record keeping, there is some drift in the subject and place/institution categories, and I assume that everyone is creating slightly varied wordings for the same concepts or organizations. We tried to minimize differences by using tags  within Airtable, but as I create more and more tags, I wonder if I should have used some of these new ones in earlier records. The next time we meet, I’d like to talk about creating a controlled vocabulary for the Subject (Authority Records) and the Place/Institution (Authority Records). Part of putting together a puzzle is making sure you are working with the pieces from the right set.

Still, despite the tedium of data entry and my concerns about consistency, I feel like I am learning a lot about Lakeland and its history. Bit by bit, I am seeing the foundational importance of the railroad, the fraught relationship between the university and Lakelanders, the complex manifestations of racism, and the ravages of urban renewal. Certain families–the Brookses, the Grosses, the Braxtons–and certain individuals–the developer John Kleiner, the assessor John Shank, councilman Leonard Smith–resurface again and again. It makes me nostalgic for my old historian work in the archive, to be honest. I would love to see the stories that Mary Sies and her students, and Maxine Gross and her community weave together with the records.