Comments on: Triage in the Archives /blog/2009/04/triage-in-the-archives/ But I fear more for Muninn... Thu, 16 May 2013 14:30:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2 By: Stian Håklev /blog/2009/04/triage-in-the-archives/comment-page-1/#comment-211040 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:10:18 +0000 http://muninn.net/blog/?p=728#comment-211040 This is really fascinating! Thanks a lot for sharing your honest thoughts and experiences, often researchers “gloss over” all the trials they have in the field. This reminds me of the essays in the “Doing fieldwork in China” book, although that book was more focused on interviews and surveys.

Your Chinese must be much better than mine, but I recognize what you are saying. It’s really frustrating to me how slow I am in reading Chinese, and the complete unability to skim. I didn’t have to go to any archives, but when I searched for the keywords related to my topic in China Academic Journals, I found more than 3500 articles directly related.

There are fewer bibliographic tools for Chinese journals (citation indices etc) easily available… how would I choose the relevant articles (I could not read 3500 articles!)… I ended up paying a Chinese graduate student to skim through articles for me, given certain criteria. I also used a lot of human contact to have professors recommend writings to me etc.

But I am sure my thesis could have been a lot better, if I had been able to read Chinese at the speed at which I read English! And I didn’t even have to contend with handwriting.

Stian

]]> By: Muninn /blog/2009/04/triage-in-the-archives/comment-page-1/#comment-119104 Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:26:09 +0000 http://muninn.net/blog/?p=728#comment-119104 Thanks for the comment Dylan. Many documents are written in a very beautiful clear (not cursive) style and the carved documents are not bad after you get used to the shortcuts they make to minimize the number of strokes, and as long as the ink is not smudged when copies are made. The scribbled meeting minutes though, which probably have some of the juiciest stuff, however, are usually way beyond my ability to decipher. Fortunately, I feel a little better when I find the archivists have just as much trouble.

]]> By: Dylan /blog/2009/04/triage-in-the-archives/comment-page-1/#comment-119062 Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:55:15 +0000 http://muninn.net/blog/?p=728#comment-119062 This kind of process sounds exciting and rewarding and everything else but extremely intimidating. Even tackling Chinese material in plain, old published books heavily stunts my ability to collect material into a coherent whole, and I’m often forced to do the same thing, massaging a possibly limited picture of a subject or event into something that explains what I want it to explain. I can’t imagine having to tackle reams of handwritten material.

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