JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, March 17, 2025

T&T steelpan newspaper history now on the Web

.. Just a click away

by

20140127

The his­to­ry of steel­pan as chron­i­cled in Tri­ni�dad news­pa­pers is now on­ly a click away. As a re­sult of a grant from UWI and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween stu­dents at UWI and the UWI li­brary, more than 4,000 news­pa­per ar­ti­cles re­lat­ed to the his­to­ry of steel­pan in T&T will be up­loaded to the Web.

Many ar­ti­cles can al­ready be viewed now with more be­ing added in the next sev­er­al months.

The project is the brain­child of steel­pan his­to­ri­an and arranger Dr Jean­nine Re­my, se­nior lec­tur­er in the De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts (DC­FA) at UWI, St Au­gus­tine.

"Since my first vis­it to Trinidad in 1989, I did my doc­tor­al re­search in this same li­brary. Even then I was wor­ried about their preser­va­tion. I copied the quo­ta I was al­lowed nev­er think­ing I would ac­tu­al­ly be part of their preser­va­tion some 25 years lat­er."

Every sec­ond se­mes­ter for the past eight years Re­my has taught a course in steel­pan his­to­ry UWI, St. Au­gus­tine. The course teach­es skills in pri­ma­ry source re­search and re­quires stu­dents to con­duct oral his­to­ry in­ter­views with pan pi­o­neers and comb through Trinida­di­an news­pa­per sources span­ning back more than 60 years.

"I re­alised the val­ue of teach­ing the stu­dents about the state of the sources avail­able on the top­ic of the steel­pan as our na­tion­al in­stru­ment," Re­my not­ed. "I nev­er dreamed that I would come back to Trinidad to teach the top­ic I was so in­ter­est­ed in re­search­ing. As a for­eign­er ap­pre­cia­tive of Trinidad's na­tion­al trea­sure, I knew that one of my goals in life would be to help or­gan­ise these pre­cious doc­u­ments, give back to the cul­ture and make the doc­u­ments avail­able for re­searchers around the world to en­joy."

Each year Re­my's stu­dents are trained by Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Li­brar­i­an Lor­raine Nero in us­ing the news­pa­per clip­ping files and mi­cro­film of Trinida­di­an news­pa­pers at the UWI li­brary–es­pe­cial­ly those doc­u­ments held in the West In­di­ana Col­lec­tion.

Stu­dents are taught not just to lo­cate these ma­te­ri­als but to analyse the con­tent and cre­ate bib­li­o­graph­ic en­tries on these sources. The frag­ile con­di­tion of the old­er clip­pings and the need to get quick­er dig­i­tal ac­cess caused Re­my to think about preser­va­tion. Her so­lu­tion was cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal data­base of all the ar­ti­cles and have it avail­able not just to stu­dents but to the pub­lic.

The process of digi­tis­ing his­toric doc­u­ments is com­mon prac­tice in li­braries around the world. In­deed, UWI's li­brary had al­ready digi­tised a num­ber of small­er spe­cial col­lec­tions avail­able such as car­ni­val cos­tume de­signs and pho­tographs from cel­e­brat­ed de­sign­er Car­lyle Chang's col­lec­tion and the Gold­berg col­lec­tion of ear­ly post­cards of Caribbean life.

In 2011, Re­my ap­proached the UWI li­brary with her plan to digi­tise the doc­u­ments and cre­ate a data­base and they agreed that some­thing had to be done in or­der to pre­serve the in­for­ma­tion. How­ev­er, the li­brary did not have the fi­nan­cial bud­get to fund such an am­bi­tious project. Both par­ties agreed to work to­geth­er seek­ing an out­side grant and as a re­sult, Re­my sought and was award­ed a fac­ul­ty re­search grant to com­plete the project in De­cem­ber 2012.

Since the project's start, Re­my has worked close­ly with the Spe­cial Col­lec­tions staff at the UWI li­brary and her stu­dents to archive and digi­tise the ma­te­r­i­al.

The te­dious work re­quires scan­ning the ar­ti­cles, cre­ate and cat­a­log a meta­da­ta form which in­cludes a sum­ma­ry and key­words for each ar­ti­cle to make it search­able, and link all this in­for­ma­tion to the UWI li­brary Web site.

Li­brar­i­an Mar­sha Win­ter su­per­vis­es the work from the li­brary side while Re­my su­per­vis­es it from the fac­ul­ty side.

The pri­ma­ry stu­dent re­search as­sis­tant for the project is Aniya Car­ty who is thrilled for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work on the project.

"I felt priv­i­leged be­ing the one and work­ing on this project helped bring every­thing that I learnt in class to life. Through this project, I learnt to ap­pre­ci­ate my cul­ture, it is one of a kind! What is amaz­ing is that the his­to­ry con­tin­ues as the steel­pan con­tin­ues to de­vel­op even to­day."

The project is on­go­ing as each ar­ti­cle must pass qual­i­ty checks be­fore it is up­loaded and made ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. The aim of project co-or­di­na­tors is to up­load more than 1,000 ar­ti­cles to the Web in the next few months. The ar­ti­cles can be ac­cessed by go­ing to the col­lec­tion it­self at the UWI Web site http://uwi­space.sta.uwi.edu/dspace/han­dle/2139/17577.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the ar­ti­cles are al­so search­able by ma­jor on­line search en­gines like Google and Bing. One need on­ly en­ter in the search terms you want to use and add "uwi­space" to lim­it the search to the UWI dig­i­tal Steel­pan News­pa­per Col­lec­tion. In ad­di­tion to the ar­ti­cles from the UWI li­brary col­lec­tion, the UWI dig­i­tal Steel­pan News­pa­per Col­lec­tion in­clud­ed ar­ti­cles gift­ed from Re­my's per­son­al col­lec­tion as well as those of a num­ber of her stu­dents and col­leagues.

"Al­most every day it seems, Dr Anne Os­borne is bring­ing me a new clip­ping," Re­my said.

Go­ing for­ward, her plan is for cur­rent and fu­ture stu­dents to con­tin­ue work­ing on the project and ex­pand­ing the col­lec­tion.

Re­my is ex­cit­ed for peo­ple to try the UWI dig­i­tal Steel­pan News­pa­per Col­lec­tion and check out what is up on the Web so far.

"The his­to­ry of steel­pan is com­plex and mak­ing these news­pa­per clip­pings eas­i­ly avail­able will help schol­ars, stu­dents and pan jumbies the world over get the first-hand re­ports from Trinidad news­pa­pers to help un­der­stand Trinidad's na­tion­al in­stru­ment and how the mu­sic of pan has evolved.

"I am de­light­ed that I got this re­search grant be­cause it of­fers a re­al ser­vice, mak­ing read­i­ly avail­able much that was not."

One schol­ar who has start­ed to look at these on­line clip­pings and is ex­cit­ed about the col­lec­tion is pan play­er ex­tra­or­di­naire Mia Gor­mandy. Af­ter earn­ing her mas­ters de­gree in mu­sic at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty, this All Stars steel­band vet­er­an is now a PhD can­di­date in eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy at Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty where she is plan­ning a dis­ser­ta­tion on pan in Japan.

"This re­source is in­valu­able not on­ly to grad­u­ate stu­dents do­ing re­search on steel­pan, but to un­der­grad­u­ates, pro­fes­sors, or any­one in­ter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the steel­pan. To have such a re­source read­i­ly avail­able not on­ly pro­vides sup­port­ing ev­i­dence for any steel­pan re­search top­ic, but al­so draws new per­spec­tive on his­to­ry, which may sought to an­swer new ques­tions about our steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty. I ap­plaud Dr Re­my for tak­ing the time to put this to­geth­er as it is and will con­tin­ue to be an im­por­tant re­source for steel­pan­nists, es­pe­cial­ly in the world of acad­e­mia."

More in­fo

UWI dig­i­tal Steel­pan News­pa­per Col­lec­tion is just one of the his­tor­i­cal col­lec­tions that the li­brary at UWI is look­ing to digi­tise and make ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic on the Web. Nero fur­ther notes that the Spe­cial Col­lec­tions de­part­ment is al­ways seek­ing do­na­tions of ma­te­r­i­al of his­toric sig­nif­i­cance. Nero can be reached at wimail@sta.uwi.edu. If any­one has clip­pings or pho­tos or oth­er steel­pan mem­o­ra­bil­ia that they want to con­tribute to this project, it is not too late and they should feel free to con­tact the li­brary. The UWI Li­brary con­tin­ues to ex­plore the ac­qui­si­tion of funds to sup­port the digi­ti­sa­tion ini­tia­tive. Spon­sors in­ter­est­ed in con­tribut­ing to this ef­fort can con­tact the Cam­pus Li­brar­i­an, the Al­ma Jor­dan Li­brary at 662-2002 ext 2009.

Ray Funk is a re­tired Alaskan judge who is pas­sion­ate­ly de­vot­ed to ca­lyp­so, pan and mas. An­drew Mar­tin is an eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist, per­cus­sion­ist, pan­nist, and as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of Mu­sic at In­ver Hills Col­lege in St Paul, Min­neso­ta.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored