Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey
Part Ten, in Which All Faces are Seen Through Interfaces
My second supervisor meeting for the internship was a Zoom meeting, one of seemingly hundreds by now. Theresa and I regularly have one-on-one meetings face-to-face about all things maps, and we have kept this up. When we met about the project, we talked about what could and could not be done toward its completion. I had done a primary batch of maps from among those we identified as being of highest priority, and my plan was to take those through the entire process of digitization, uploading, metadata entry, etc., so that if there were questions at any point in the process, we would know about them as soon as possible. However, that left many maps unscanned as I took the first batch through. Those maps are still sitting all by their lone in Wells, waiting their turn. My plans to tour the Kinsey Institute are postponed, of course, as are the in-person interviews with archivists at Wells about the specifics of working with digital images.
However, I do have some of my primary and secondary research sources at home, so I can continue to learn about Kinsey’s wasp research, and I can also brainstorm about exhibits, collection publicity, and education and outreach options. I am also going to take the opportunity to watch both a PBS documentary on Kinsey and the eponymous feature film starring Liam Neeson, as I never had the opportunity to watch either before now. And since I have access to the map image files via remote network connection with GIMMS department computers, I can finish inputting those metadata fields for which the information comes directly off the maps themselves. A pretty good situation all things considered.
Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.
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