"Project Description" from "Sharing KPV Mariana Islands Collection" proposal
submitted to Northern Marianas Humanities Council
[March 25, 2019]
Seven (7) years ago I, Kit Porter Van Meter (KPV) visited the CNMI after having been away for 35 years. During that trip I went to the Northern Marianas Humanities Council (NMHC) office and subsequently the council’s director, Scott Russell, came to my house in Massachusetts while on a mainland trip. After reviewing the roughly 100 boxes of collected NMI related materials, he asked me not to throw them away, but to organize and identify them. In 2015/2016 NMHC funded a grant to hire assistance to start arranging, organizing, inventorying and digitizing these materials. Attachment 1 is the summary of what was accomplished with the NMHC funding. At that time, NMHC and other entities were not prepared to accept the actual and digital contents.
For the past three (3) years with the help of Michael Sousa, originally partially financed through the 2015/16 NMHC grant, we have continued to work. Michael has created a web site KPVCollection.com and we have begun posting pictures & documents from 1967-69 when I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) on Rota. The responses have been heart-warming with people responding that they and their families are now seeing pictures they have never seen before (see attachment 2). In 2017, I attended a NMI PCV reunion and shared the project. Peace Corps (PC) was only in the NMI for roughly 10 years so we are all around 70-years-old. Some asked if they could add to the website. Michael redesigned it to allow for content from others and created PCV Memories.
Now, as NMHC Proposal Project Director/Research Scholar, I want to add more PCV content; improve & add captions; have PCVs and NMI community members add stories and create stories together; and finish creating stories from my digitized pictures and audio. For example, this past month, Rota Returned PCV (RPCV) George Will, wrote a story Fishing with my Tata, added his pictures, and we captioned them together. We asked one community member to add to the captions, but our system needs development. With grant funding we will explore Facebook and other ways to have people add information—many have suggested this (see attachment 2). I am hesitant to use Facebook without assistance. We would facilitate discussion groups around certain periods and topics and collect stories.
Since the 2015/16 NMHC grant we have also been working to make the document collection available to all. Michael has moved that inventory to a new system so digitized content can be linked and available. We need to finish arranging and inventorying the box content and then digitize and link. Most of this content is unique. Copies of the old reports and publications probably would not have survived the typhoons, humidity, varmints and years in the NMI. Much of the original content is in bad shape (old, faded, mimeographed, damaged and/or rusted stapled documents). My first choice would be to send all the content of the collection to the NMI, but possible recipients are concerned about not having secure space for storage and not being able to make it available to the public. The destruction from Typhoon Yutu has made this even more evident.
We need assistance to digitize, link, preserve and make available this content. Attachments 3 and 4 are an edited content list of boxes inventoried (39 boxes) and not inventoried (26 boxes). Complete Box Content Inventory is at https://airtable.com/shraGHGKTy1kSVYTo. Attachment 5 provides an edited sample of one inventoried box, but it is best to view inventories on the website . Box contents reflect my collecting and my time employed by the NMI, 1975-1983. For example, my grandson digitized most of boxes #16 and #23 last summer. You can go to those boxes and see the digitized content—in this case Chamorro and Carolinian books and reports.
I can no longer work as much as I have been on this project. With financial assistance, we will expand Michael’s role in working with NMI community members and PCVs to collect, prepare and post content. With help, I hope to complete arranging boxes, inventorying, digitizing and linking. I also plan to finish putting together my stories. I will identify and communicate to involve the community in selecting content to be digitized and in encouraging PCVs to contribute.
(Dream for the future: to create multilingual books for children based on materials gathered)
For the past three (3) years with the help of Michael Sousa, originally partially financed through the 2015/16 NMHC grant, we have continued to work. Michael has created a web site KPVCollection.com and we have begun posting pictures & documents from 1967-69 when I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) on Rota. The responses have been heart-warming with people responding that they and their families are now seeing pictures they have never seen before (see attachment 2). In 2017, I attended a NMI PCV reunion and shared the project. Peace Corps (PC) was only in the NMI for roughly 10 years so we are all around 70-years-old. Some asked if they could add to the website. Michael redesigned it to allow for content from others and created PCV Memories.
Now, as NMHC Proposal Project Director/Research Scholar, I want to add more PCV content; improve & add captions; have PCVs and NMI community members add stories and create stories together; and finish creating stories from my digitized pictures and audio. For example, this past month, Rota Returned PCV (RPCV) George Will, wrote a story Fishing with my Tata, added his pictures, and we captioned them together. We asked one community member to add to the captions, but our system needs development. With grant funding we will explore Facebook and other ways to have people add information—many have suggested this (see attachment 2). I am hesitant to use Facebook without assistance. We would facilitate discussion groups around certain periods and topics and collect stories.
Since the 2015/16 NMHC grant we have also been working to make the document collection available to all. Michael has moved that inventory to a new system so digitized content can be linked and available. We need to finish arranging and inventorying the box content and then digitize and link. Most of this content is unique. Copies of the old reports and publications probably would not have survived the typhoons, humidity, varmints and years in the NMI. Much of the original content is in bad shape (old, faded, mimeographed, damaged and/or rusted stapled documents). My first choice would be to send all the content of the collection to the NMI, but possible recipients are concerned about not having secure space for storage and not being able to make it available to the public. The destruction from Typhoon Yutu has made this even more evident.
We need assistance to digitize, link, preserve and make available this content. Attachments 3 and 4 are an edited content list of boxes inventoried (39 boxes) and not inventoried (26 boxes). Complete Box Content Inventory is at https://airtable.com/shraGHGKTy1kSVYTo. Attachment 5 provides an edited sample of one inventoried box, but it is best to view inventories on the website . Box contents reflect my collecting and my time employed by the NMI, 1975-1983. For example, my grandson digitized most of boxes #16 and #23 last summer. You can go to those boxes and see the digitized content—in this case Chamorro and Carolinian books and reports.
I can no longer work as much as I have been on this project. With financial assistance, we will expand Michael’s role in working with NMI community members and PCVs to collect, prepare and post content. With help, I hope to complete arranging boxes, inventorying, digitizing and linking. I also plan to finish putting together my stories. I will identify and communicate to involve the community in selecting content to be digitized and in encouraging PCVs to contribute.
(Dream for the future: to create multilingual books for children based on materials gathered)