It was quite a bittersweet moment when Dr. Esprit informed us that we would be switching gears with the project from Zotero to spreadsheet data cleaning. It was sweet in the sense that I was excited for the change of pace that the spreadsheet would bring and for the opportunity to familiarize myself with the findings of my peers on different time periods. However, it was bitter in the sense that I would be leaving behind my 1981 – 1990 time period that I had grown fond of over the various weeks.

In this stage of the project, we were no longer assigned time periods but rather data columns imported from the Zotero folders to the spreadsheet. I chose to work on the columns “Author” and “Translator Name”. My task was to verify the names of the authors of the various books, standardize their spellings especially in the cases of aliases (like V.S. Naipaul instead of Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul) and to edit any misspellings particularly for omitted accents. In the case of translated work I also had to enter the names of the translator(s) responsible.

At first, I tackled this task by simply searching the names of the book or newspaper article identified for a given spreadsheet row but I quickly found this tactic rather inefficient as it created uncertainty in whether I was identifying the editions named within the rows. Consequently, I turned to utilizing the original link of the books. In other words, I would run an advanced search in WorldCat of the OCLC numbers pulled from all books found on WorldCat, or any product link attached in order to then edit the author column where necessary.

In doing the translator column, on the other hand, I found myself becoming very creative since it was often not outright clear whether a particular book was a translated edition. Here, I would utilize a combination of information mainly the authorship’s country and the language of the book to first determine whether it became necessary to perform further research in identifying a translator.

Once I established the above strategy, I found myself completing a large number of entries within short periods of time. Although I encountered various hiccups, such as identifying authors with questionable Caribbean ancestry or literary works that were outside the scope of the project material, I found that seeking assistance and clarification from the project team and leaving comments on the spreadsheet was quite beneficial. All in all, my time thus far with working on the spreadsheet has been enjoyable and I anticipate working more efficiently and speedily with time.