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MENTORING JAVIER TREVINO'S VISUAL ARCHIVE PROJECT

This semester I mentored Javier Trevino's creation of a visual data archive and data base that includes photographs of the extraordinary Washington's Birthday celebration that occurs every year in Texas in a largely hispanic community. I trained him in the use of Filemaker Pro to make a data base with which to organize and catalogue his images, as well as make them readily accessible to his students. I also trained him to use Adobe Photoshop in order to scan a selection of the more than 2,000 images that he brought back from field work in Texas in the winter of last year.

My own experience with building a visual archive for my Human Evolution course helped me to ask him the right questions in order to determine what parameters were critical for inclusion in his data base and how the data should be structured for presentation and retreval. My experience in using projected digital images for class presentations also helped us to think through the ways and formats in which Javier should store his images for potential multiple uses, including slide shows, classroom data base demonstrations, and personal use by Javier and his individual students.

Training Javier proved invaluable to me in refining directions for procedures that I will be asking students to use in the process of contributing to my Anthropology of Art visual archive data-base. Training a novice makes it clear what can and cannot be taken for granted, and compels one to articulate procedures in a way that they are comprehenible for the uninitiated. It also compels one to streamline procedures so that they can be performed as quickly as possible, a critical consideration for Javier, who is dealing with a large number of images.

Last updated on 6/9/99; 2:01:08 PM
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