When the opportunity to pursue ABC archival work was excitedly mentioned in Slack communication channels this past school year, I was beyond thrilled at the prospect of working closely with a cohort of dedicated scholars as an Archival Researcher. Outside of my budding research and archival skills developed in my participation in ABC Archives, my heightened organizational, research, and archival skills developed as a past participant in the Digital Humanities Summer Scholarship (DHSS) will allow me to collaborate in expanding the archival histories of Black student organizers at Lafayette and in the Easton community.

 ABC archival research is incredibly important work that documents the history and presence of Black students at Lafayette. Black students and historic organizations like ABC have made significant contributions to Lafayette College’s academic, social, and cultural history. Indeed, archival work—like that being done by ABC Archives—ensures that the contributions and presence of Black students throughout Lafayette’s history are highlighted and celebrated. I am especially interested in participating this summer with the archives project to continue the acknowledgement of the significances of Black students at Lafayette, who have made this campus and community what it is today.

 As an Indo-Guyanese woman who has conducted research on Indo-diasporic history with DHSS, I am excited to use the digital humanity tools I gained from my summer experience to participate as an Archival Researcher. I hope to bring my familiarity with tools like Scalar, Voyant, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and various Data Mining tools to my archival research. Additionally, I will use my extensive training as a writing associate to apply the necessary analytical and technical writing skills when recording various documents.

In the past week since the start of our summer, I have edited our blog page for a greater organization flow and I began to read through the 50th fieldnotes and ABC archives project. As of now, I beginning to think about what a timeline could look like (physically and digitally).