Indexing the First Few Decades of the RID VIEWS
Marc D. Holmes, MEd:IP, CI, CT, NIC, SC:L, coreCHI
Like any good member with hoarding tendencies, I saved almost every issue of the RID VIEWS from the time I became a member until paper publication ceased.
I moved several file boxes of VIEWS from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. and then between several houses and workplaces. Eventually I decided it was time to dispose of them, so I became an electronic hoarder instead. Over the course of about two years, I scanned all of my issues. At the time, I wasn’t sure why I was keeping them, because there was no way I was going to read them all again to find an article. Once I had them all electronically saved, I put them into a folder on Google Drive in case I ever needed them.
As an adjunct instructor in the Department of Interpretation and Translation at Gallaudet University, I knew many of the instructors used articles from VIEWS in their courses, which prompted me to share access to my collection with my colleagues. Not long after that, RID made their electronic archive of VIEWS available to members. Since I thought it would be useful to have a comprehensive collection, I made a copy of RID’s files and merged them with mine. While it was nice to have one electronic repository, it still had limited use, because you would have to know what you are looking for to be able to find it.
As a doctoral student at Gallaudet, I participated in a research project with Dr. Danielle Hunt in Spring 2018 to plan, develop, and create an index for VIEWS. Having grown up with a father who was a librarian, I had a rough idea of how to start indexing the articles, but before we could begin we needed a common file-naming convention. This would require us to rename all of the files so they included the Volume, Issue, Month/Quarter, and Year.
Depending on when you joined RID, your understanding of what VIEWS is, what it is for, and what it contains may be very different.
After beginning the indexing process, we realized that the name of the publication hasn’t always been VIEWS, and that it had changed several times. With that in mind we again renamed all of the files to include the name of the Publication.
Our next step was to develop an initial set of keywords to categorize the articles. We came up with about a dozen that we thought would be sufficient to categorize all of the articles. The twelve words in that initial set were far too limited and over the course of developing the index, the keyword list grew to more than thirty different keywords.
As most people are aware, good indices contain the publication name, volume and issue, date of publication, article title and authors, along with selected keywords for each article. I won’t bore you with all the details of index data entry, but suffice it to say my forty hours of internship work only allowed me to complete roughly twenty-five years of VIEWS!
Some interesting things have come to light in doing this project and I’m sure now that the membership has access, more will be discovered as people delve in and read what we have published. These things include the fact that the publication title has not always been VIEWS. At different points, it was the Newsletter, the RID Newsletter, the RIDer, the Interpreter Views and the InterpreNews. Additionally, reading the newsletter allows you to see when different people entered into service of the organization, and when ideas become popular. Depending on when you joined RID, your understanding of what VIEWS is, what it is for, and what it contains may be very different.
While I believe it is vitally important that the index be completed, my doctoral studies cannot allow me to complete it at this time. There are several reasons why I shared the VIEWS repository and index with RID now in this incomplete state. First, we know that there are missing issues from the online scanned version. If you have printed copies of VIEWS, please check to see if you have issues that we do not. Second, if you have the time or interest to help enter articles into the index, please let us know and we can crowdsource completing the second 25 years. And finally, if you are a researcher or a student who needs the content from within VIEWS, you now have access to the largest online collection. Thank you and enjoy exploring VIEWS!
Marc D. Holmes, MEd:IP, CI and CT, NIC, SC:L, coreCHI began studying ASL as an undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh, and then studied mentoring and Interpreting pedagogy at Northeastern University. He is currently a staff interpreter and doctoral student at Gallaudet University. Since 1988, he has worked in a variety of positions as an interpreter, scheduler, manager, instructor and mentor. He is married to a fellow certified interpreter, Melanie, and they are proud parents of a teenage son, Noah.
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