Visiting Spanish historian Dr. Carlos Madrid said a workshop/training or seminar could provide techniques on how to understand documents that reveal so much about the history of the local people.
Madrid made a presentation at the American Memorial Park Visitor Center on Tuesday night entitled “Islas Marianas Digital Archive.” He said there are thousands and thousands of historical documents about the islands.
“Some of these documents may be interesting to one person and uninteresting to another. If you translate all of them it may take hundreds of years to go over these documents,” Madrid said.
He showed the audience some examples of the documents like a correspondence from the governor of the Marianas in his own handwriting addressed to the governor of the Philippines.
Madrid said the historical documents tell a lot about how the people lived and how things came to be on the islands.
“The historical documents will not only make one look for answers but ask questions about what life was in the Marianas before. For example, when you see an answer in a document, you will be asking yourself what questions are these answers for,” Madrid said.
He cited for example the documents regarding the process of naming streets and villages.
“These are reliable pieces of history, and understanding them can give us knowledge about the history of the islands and a detailed history of the daily lives of the people,” he said.
Madrid said they have started digitalizing the historical documents which will be made available to the public.
“We are looking into having all these documents digitalized so that any search would be easier by just entering key words about different topics,” he said.
Madrid started working on the digital archive project to convert the historical documents into digital copies last year.
The project is in collaboration with the Digital Archive Initiative of the NMI Council for the Humanities.
