This summer I worked with Professor Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert and Michael Aronna on the Oviedo Project. Professor Paravisini-Gebert and Aronna founded the project with the goal of translating the complete text of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Historia General de las Indias. It is an enormous task and has never been done before! The work consists of four volumes each of which has multiple books which in can have upwards of forty chapters each of varying lengths.

One of my favorite images found at the JCB Library.

My role in the project was to work with another research assistant, Kendal Simmons a senior at Vassar and last years’ Ford Scholar for the Oviedo Project, on posting chapters to the official Oviedo Project website. Posting chapters consisted of multiple steps, of which my favorite was finding images to post along with the chapters. The John Carter Brown Online Luna Library was foreign to me at the beginning of the project but sure enough became my best friend. In order to find the perfect picture for each chapter I would read it through and then go on a hunt through the JCB library for the fitting image. The best part wasn’t finding the right image but rather all of the images I would come by before finding the one I deemed appropriate.

Other than posting chapters I also worked on assuring the uniformity of the manuscript in reference to certain words in Spanish. This was high on the task list because as new exciting opportunities arise for the project the cleanliness and professionalism of the work is increasingly important.

One of my posts.

Overall, I had a wonderful summer working on this project. The entire editing team was a joy to work with. Our meetings were never short on ingenuity, creativity, and laughter.