Visualizing Caribbean Literary Encounters: Progress Report 4

Report / January 27, 2022 / 2 Comments

Throughout the course of this week, I was assigned alongside Luam, the task of filling the Language column in the spreadsheet. Instead of having to start from scratch with the finding of the books and then the language, due to the entry of records in Zotero a vast number of the books already had their language. What we needed to do was to ensure that the languages all followed the same format, as well as finding the missing languages and the books that had “undetermined” as their language. The language was found with the use of the URL link used to originally find the book. Usually, the language would be present, so all that needed to be done was to copy the language stated and paste that into the correct field. On the occasion where there was no URL or the language of the book was not stated, I had to find the book again. I did this with the use of the author’s name, book title, publisher and year of publication. The sites that I found most useful were WorldCat, Goodreads and Book Depository. On these sites, I would find the entry that matched the data provided and use that entry’s language in the spreadsheet. This usually did not take a lot of time to pinpoint. However, there were some books that were rather difficult to locate, so these were highlighted to be revisited. Once the other fields were completed, the highlighted ones were looked at again. Some of these were easier to find the second time around as I was more knowledgeable as to how to search for the required information. However, there were some entries that could not be found, thus they remained highlighted. Though with most books the language stated was straightforward, there were books that had several languages stated. All of these languages were entered. Then the issue of Haitian Creole, French Haitian Creole, Creole and Pidgins arose. We had to determine if Haitian Creole, French Haitian Creole and Creole were referring to the same language. With pidgins, we had to locate what language was used.