Enhancing Women’s Names in Princeton University Library’s Latin American Collections

Project background: In fall 2020, Princeton University Library (PUL)’s Inclusive Description Working Group (IDWG) attempted to identify 82 unnamed women in the Latin America manuscripts collections. Processing Archivist Chloe Pfendler and Manuscripts Division Archival Resident Carolina Meneses led the research on these women who had been referred to by only their husband’s name or some other familial association.

Workflow

1. Identifying and Researching Names

1. Open the script* results spreadsheet from the description audit and navigate to Sheet 2. This sheet contains only results from Latin American and Spanish language collections.

2. Beginning with the first cell, check to see what word matched in column K. If the matching word is “Ms”. or “Miss”, skip this row.
3. Next, check to make sure the result is not a false positive (i.e. a result that does not reference an actual person, like a published work or fictional character name) by checking the component id in the finding aid site.

1. To check the finding aid using the component id, enter the collection code and component id at the end of the finding aid site url

1. Ex: https://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/C0075/c00002

4. If the result is a false positive, enter “false positive” in Column M, and move on to the next row.
5. If the result is not a false positive, perform a search of the rest of the finding aid to see if you can recover a full name.
6. If you are unable to find a full name for the person elsewhere in the finding aid, begin to search online for the person’s full name. If they are identified by their husband’s name, make sure to include the full name in your search. You may also have luck finding the name by researching the husband. Sources that may be especially helpful when researching names are Wikipedia, SNAC, Ancestry.com, and the New York Times Obituaries.
7. If you are able to recover a full name for the person, enter it in Column N.
8. Once you have completed these steps for all results, you can move to Step 2  of the workflow.

2. Enhancing the Names in EAD

1. Once you have finished researching each name, it’s time to enter any full names you recovered in the finding aid.
2. For each name that you were able to find, open up the finding aid for the collection in Oxygen and navigate to the corresponding component id.
3. In order to avoid accidentally changing creator-supplied titles or information, we will be adding full names by using parentheses.

1. Ex: “Mrs. Ramírez” becomes “Mrs. Ramírez (Emily).
2. Note: If the name is a woman who is particularly notable, it may be appropriate to change the unittitle to reflect her full name only.

4. Do these steps for all the results you have been able to find full names for, then update in SVN.

*The results spreadsheet was used by adapting an XQuery script developed by Kelly Bolding and the Inclusive Description Working Group at Princeton University Library. The script (description_audit_survey.xquery) can be found on Kelly’s GitHub page.