An­drew Mar­tin

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.