Since Thursday, Jacob and I have made relatively significant progress in scoping out the purview of our project. We’ve decided to broaden our focus from Mexican migration to Latin American migration, as we didn’t want the specificity to hinder any prospective interviewees. We spoke with our campus’s research archivist and set up an appointment for Tuesday to go through the government data collections archive. We plan on pouring through data from sources like the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as the Department of Labor, to gain further insight into the Latin American presence within the CSRA since the 1980’s.
In terms of audio and digital tools, Jacob has been gathering and testing his personal recording devices, and is in the process of identifying the tools made available through our university. Meanwhile, I’ve been toying around with various digital tools, specifically StoryMaps and Timeline, to get a feel for the most effective ways to project our communities’ oral histories. StoryMaps feels much more effective now that we’ve expanded our scope from strictly the city of Aiken to the entire Central Savannah River Area, which consists of twenty-one counties spanning across the border of South Carolina and Georgia. Gathering perspectives from both states is definitely going to add an interesting element, so I’m very eager to bring that to fruition.
As far as working towards the interviewing process, we’ve been able to identify a specific location to seek out potential interviewees. I’ve also reached out to a leader of The Asociación Cultural Hispanoamericana de la CSRA for a possible interview later this week, and am anxiously awaiting her response. Fingers crossed. Honestly, I’m extremely nervous about the nearing endeavor of conducting an interview, but, I’m trying to perceive it as an opportunity for me to overcome my anxieties. Again y’all, fingers crossed.