Blog Post #2

This was my first experience using XML and translating an archive. I found both of these tasks extremely interesting and worthwhile as a believe I gained a ton of new skills and knowledge. Something that surprised me was that I could comprehend the archives text well, which served useful when translating it into typed text. The most challenging part was the use of XML, as I have never ventured into this field of using virtual studio code. When going through the XML worksheet I had to ask multiple questions to the professor to check if what I was doing was correct even for the smallest of details. Every time I went up to the professor I ended up learning something new as how I have to add <p> and </p> at the start and end of each paragraph or to add <persName> and </persName> to identify the people who have been mentioned within the archive letters. However, I still have a long way to go with XML and HTML to be able to complete these tasks by myself without much assistance from the professor.

At the end of the translation, I found the results to be very compelling as they may serve a greater purpose than just for this lesson learning, as it can help when building the Rutgers digital archives which can help people who are thousands of miles away to find information on past Rutgers students. The knowledge from doing these translations linked strongly with the past reading I have been doing as some of them explained how XML would work and others about the war service bureau.