Getting to Know FDP

I was finishing my MSLIS at Drexel, and, through a series of fortunate events, moved from being an intern in the Teaching, Research, and Learning Division of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library to being an intern in the Kislak Center. Shortly after my arrival here, I met Francis Daniel Pastorius and his Beehive. Having written my dissertation on the music and life of Maria Antonia, Electress of Saxony (1724-1780), I have more than a passing interest in German culture of the early modern period. I became intrigued by Pastorius; he was, I am fond of saying, anti-slavery before anti-slavery was cool. Just think how different this country would be now had the Quakers taken to heart the 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery, of which he was one of the signers. His is an anti-establishment voice, and his life and work give us an alternative window into early America.

I was given the honor of being one of the early Digital Beehive annotators, one of the first to help turn it into something more easily searchable. The first step in this was to draw a box around a Topic in the Digital Beehive’s Index. The next was to match that Topic to its corresponding Entry in volume 1 or 2 of the Beehive, and put the information into another box. After that, one assigns a computer-generated unique identifier to the Entry. The result looks something like this on the back end:

Entry: Apples

Topic: Apples

#item-abcd1234

It sounds like a simple task, and yet, I wound up compiling a running log of the not-always-simple process that I called, Pastorius is fun, but weird. I began writing these notes so that I could both document my process for myself and light the way for future Beehivers. I had begun the annotation process by transcribing, on a pad of paper, the words in each column of the Index that had numbers 1300 or greater (a colleague was boxing entries from 1 to 1299). Thus:

Abatement 1326

        To abate 1326

Abbott 1424

Abbreviating 1480

I then described my process step-by-step each day. Here is my first log entry that begins as if in mid-conversation:

4/12/17

I then started search for Abatement in Vol. 2. I looked at Image 269. There, at the top of the page, is Entry number 1326, but the Topic is “to debase”. Close, but no cigar.

I double-checked the Index to see if I had correctly copied the number and topic. I had. So then I went into Vol 1. There is a 1326 on Image 377, it turns out, but there is no Topic specified. It is, rather, an anti-Pope statement beginning, “Pontifex in its vulgar acceptation signifies a priest”. What?? In any case, I boxed “to debase” in Volume 2, just for fun.

I decided to move onto the next one: abbott. 1424. This time, I started in Vol 1, but its 1424 is “*1424. Post. 596. ] As it is with the Names of the Seas &.” Clearly not what I’m looking for, so back to Volume 2. in Image 288, 1424 starts with a paragraph on Clothes, has another paragraph (also numbered “1424”) on Education, and in between, this definition, “an abbott: An Abbess or Abbatess.” OK! If that’s what he has, then I’ll take it, and so I boxed just that definition, leaving Clothes and Education for another time. I also pulled the actual Beehive off the shelf to quickly confirm that there were no other number 1326s or 1424s hiding in the woodwork.

I then moved on to “Abbreviating. 1480”, and it was where I expected to find it: Image 299 of Volume 2.

All the above took 1.5 hours.

I took a breath and started with the Ms version for “abhorring. 1320”. Looked in volume 2 where it should be (Image 267), and it was not there. I surrendered for the day.

And so it continued for a month, with my portion of the entries under the letter “A”. Along the way, I discovered missing pages:

April. 4576

Missing [That’s a real shame, because I would like to have known what he said about me. :-)]

I wound up creating a separate Excel sheet that logged the missing pages, which helped later Beehivers in creating the Table of Contents. I have since moved from intern to librarian, and while I no longer take an active role in annotating the Digital Beehive, I, and my running log, remain on hand to provide advice, encouragement and a bit of gentle humor now and again.