Reflection: Archives Alive
Throughout the Archives Alive project, there were several challenges, discoveries, and
surprises. The project took on several steps including transcribing, researching, writing, creating
video, and presenting. Each step towards the completion of this project added a new dynamic to
the assignment.
I found transcribing the article and researching about Simon Estes to be the most
interesting part of the project. Taking a piece of history and learning about its context was very
engaging. I discovered many new resources for primary sources and organization such as the
library search tools and Coggle. Next, once the research had been finished, writing up a
rhetorical analysis and historical contextualization were not too much of a challenge, but
combining the two to make one coherent piece was somewhat of a struggle. I was surprised that
the rhetoric part of the writing assignment was a bit more difficult to work out than the historical
contextualization. After the final writing piece had been put together, the video was the next
challenge that I faced. Gathering all of the pieces for the video (pictures, narration, and software)
was not the challenge for the assignment, but putting it all together was the real obstacle.
Technology failure or a lack of quality software created some bumps in the road for almost every
student at one point or another. I was surprised at how proud I was when I finished my video
because of the amount of work that I put into its creation. Lastly, the presentation, in my opinion,
was oddly the hardest part of this assignment. I classify that part as oddly hard because
synthesizing all of your research and work to a formal presentation seemed like a very natural
and easy final step. Yet, I found structuring my speech as well as meeting the time minimum to
be my biggest obstacle. I enjoy public speaking about subjects that I find engaging and
interesting, and therefore, I was somewhat surprised at the amount of nerves I had while
presenting the speech in front of several hungry librarians. This could also be attributed to the
amount, or complete lack of, sleep that I had received the night before, but I suppose that was not
a challenge brought to me because of this project.
All in all, this project was a unique and fun way to engage in local history through the
archives of an important Iowan while utilizing rhetoric to allow for a deeper understanding of the
documents.