After several weeks of preparation for our first digital project, Our teacher Ms. Esprit finally provided us with the rubric of what the project will entail. Upon reading that document then attending a class where the topic was further introduced, I learned that for this project we will be Visualizing Caribbean Literary Encounters and I was specifically tasked with obtaining all literary work written by Caribbean authors between 2011 and 2022. Instantly, I felt a bit intimidated and overwhelmed with the large amount of literary work that I would have to collect. However, with further explanation of how to go about collecting the literary work, I realized that it won't be as hard as I initially thought it was. With this information in mind, I visited several archival websites like WorldCat, Internet Archive, Google Books, and Google scholar, and several others alike to access the books within my assigned time frame. One technique that I followed was researching famous Caribbean authors within the years 2011 and 2022 then I would go to the different websites listed above to find the books they have written. After finding the books that were aligned with my given time frame, I saved them onto Zotero which acts as a storehouse of all the metadata of the literary work. The previous classes where we learned how to use Zotero really became beneficial to me. The reading about creating sustainable projects by Daniel Pitti also gave me some necessary insight going into the Writers, Readers, and Scenes Project. I learned that in order to create sustainable projects, one must really understand what the research question is asking and has to be familiar with new and already existing technologies. V.Pitti mentioned that when a digital humanist has a clear understanding of his or her intellectual objectives and is able to use the tools required to achieve the goals of the project, this makes the whole process easier and faster. I totally agree with this point. As I am about to begin my first digital project, I can already see how my familiarity with and comprehension of certain digital tools will influence my efficiency and performance since I am not experienced with them. However, it is a learning process and with practice and determination, I will successfully complete my role in the creation of that project. V.Pitti also mentioned that as a scholar, one should analyze, define, and represent the data in detail. All of these are points that I will surely take into consideration while doing my first digital project.
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