Frequently Asked Questions

Background on the OAAP

What is the scope of the OAAP?

The OAAP is a digital archive that provides open access to historical documents on the Americas. The project aims to facilitate hemispheric research by providing access to documents that emphasize the fluidity of borders, people, ideas, and texts across the Americas. Rather than reinforce the limited nation-state approach to literature and history, the OAAP opens research possibilities through a hemispheric approach that spans national and political borders. For more information about the purpose and functionality of the OAAP, see the Conceptual Framework under the “About” tab.

What type of documents does the OAAP hold?

The OAAP includes a wide variety of documents, such as government treaties and correspondence, personal letters ranging from figures such as Jefferson Davis to José Martí, travel diaries, medical records, bills of slave sale, declarations of independence, historiographic and ethnographic essays, poems, full-text novels, maps, images, sketches, and more. Documents date from 1492 to approximately 1920.

What collections are eligible for the OAAP?

Eligible collections for the OAAP are those that take into account the scope of the project. Collections must be online and have a permanent identification that will allow our site to harvest their original digital repository. Metadata needs to include a title and date. Subject headings are also highly recommended. There is no limit on material type. We accept collections with images, transcriptions or a combination of both, as well as translations. We do not require the same detail in the TEI/XML that is seen in the Rice Collection. TEI/XML refers to the encoding of the document, which can be viewed under a documents metadata via the “view markup” hyperlink.

How does the OAAP collect data?

The OAAP brings together collection data from different sites into one central search interface. Our system harvests metadata from partnering sites’ collections following OAI protocols. Currently, we extract item level data from a DSpace platform repository and a TEI/XML web based collection. To facilitate an integrated archive, the OAAP project team customized the mapping of partners’ collection data to a series of common fields. Though only title and a permanent URL link are required to identify a resource, we encourage the inclusion of additional descriptive elements to facilitate usability. The OAAP architecture uses a Solr engine, which provides full text indexing of the contents of textual documents as well as the associated metadata.

What does a document's metadata include? How do I find it?

A digital resource is made up of three parts: metadata, page images, and a transcription/translation of the document. The metadata includes the bibliographic and digital information of a document. To find a document’s metadata, search for and select a document by clicking on the hyperlinked title. An information page will appear that includes the document’s metadata. To go straight to the document, select “View online.” You can also see the coding of the document under “view markup,” a smaller tab directly below the “View online” link. Below this tab, you will find “Item Metadata,” which includes the title, author, translator, an abstract, the document’s description, and citation information. Below the metadata, section users can find the licensing information under “Rights and Usage.” Finally, we list the “Related Links” and additional collections in which the document may be featured. For further information about the OAAP’s terminology, visit the Glossaryunder the “About” tab.

Metadata is also included in the TEI document itself. At the beginning of a document beneath the bibliographic entry, users can find three tabs on the right side of the screen entitled, “file description(Bibliographic Info),” “Encoding description (Editorial Principles),” and “Profile description (Subject Terms).”

What type of translations does the OAAP include?

The OAAP documents can be found in mainly English and Spanish, although the archive does include documents in Portuguese and French that have been translated into English.

How were these materials translated? What method was used?

The translations in the OAAP were produced following a combination of faithful and semantic methods. They maintain the contextual meaning, which is as faithful to the original as possible. They also take into account the original text's aesthetics and include equivalent idioms. Notes provide explanations of archaic words, cultural allusions, and other phrases that have no accurate translation. The translator researched the documents' backgrounds and compared them to similar documents of the same time period to produce faithful and accurate translations. This translation process also included the research of specialized terminology (such as 16th century Spanish colonial legal language) and common abbreviations.

What are the rights and usage of the OAAP's documents?

All materials in the OAAP are freely available. Most of these documents are licensed under the Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

How do I contact the OAAP?

Email: oaap@rice.edu

Website: http://oaap.rice.edu/

Twitter: @ouramericas

Blog: http ://ouramericas .org

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Accessing the Archive

What search options and finding aids are available through the OAAP?

There are three search options available: 1) simple search which can be found on the main page under “Search the Archive.” 2) the Americas concepts. 3) Community Tags. The final two options can be found under the box “Browse the Archive” on the homepage.

How can I narrow my search on the "Search the Archive" option?

You can narrow your search through the simple search option. Type a key word into the search box. A list of documents will appear. To the left of the documents, you will find the narrowing options. From here, you can narrow your options by title, author, full text availability, description, date, Library of Congress subject heading, OAAP concept, community tag, document type, place, collection, and electronic publisher. Select an option(s) and search the archive again.

You can also narrow your search from the beginning. Select “Advanced Search” below the “Search the Archive” box and type in a key word or words. Use the narrowing options to narrow your scope and then search the archive.

How can I view the documents after I search them?

After searching the archive, you will have three options from which to view your results. The first view tab is the “list view,” which is simply a list of the documents by title. The second tab is the “timeline view” which allows you to see all of the documents pulled by the search in chronological order.

Lastly, you will see the “map view” tab, which provides an approximate location for the original source of these documents. The place names for each document were assigned by catalogers based on a general review (but not a deep or comprehensive one) of a document's contents. Place names were selected from the Getty Index (Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/tgn/). The Getty index has a number of historical place names as well as modern ones. The Getty index has latitude/longitude coordinators associated with each place. Hence, the OAAP systematically matches our metadata records against the Getty Index to get coordinates per item. However, the map view is approximate and often inaccurate except at a very high level.

What are the Americas Concepts?

The Americas Concepts are a series of key themes under which documents are grouped. These terms reflect the hemispheric approach of the archive, and were developed by Ralph Bauer and Caroline Levander to facilitate the discovery of documents related to themes of hemispheric approaches. Each document in the archive has been assigned at least one concept by OAAP project members, Melissa Bailar, Moramay Lopez-Alonso, and Lorena Gauthereau-Bryson. This search option can be found under the box “Browse the Archive” on the homepage.

What are Community Tags?

The Community Tags tab is a free search and save option that allows users to create their own temporary space within the archive. “Tags” are terms created by users of the archive. After searching the archive, users can “tag” a document or series of documents with a key word or theme, which will appear in the tab “Community Tags” on the homepage. This tag will temporarily store these tags. (Storage time depends on the number of users creating tags, but tags are often saved for a couple months.) This option allows users to return to their documents without searching the archive each time. Currently, tags are not privatized and can be viewed by all users of the archive. This search and save option can be found under the “Browse the Archive” box on the homepage.

How do I tag documents?

If you are using this feature for the first time, you will need to create a username, password, and include an email address. (This feature is free and will not sign you up for any spam or unwanted random emails.) To sign up, simply find a document you want to tag, click “tag” in the upper right hand corner and a box will appear to either sign in or create an account. Click on the blue highlighted link “Create One” to create an account.

To tag a document, begin by searching the archive for documents. When you find a document you want to tag, look to the upper right hand corner of the screen and select the button “tag.” Sign in under your username and password. Type in a key word under which to archive this document for further use. Keep terms to a maximum of two words. If your term is more than one word, be sure to connect these words with some kind of dash or underscore. For example, see “Spanish_Colonialism.” When you return to the OAAP homepage, select the Community Tags tab and find your key term. Selecting this term will allow you to access the document you tagged.

How do I print documents from the archive?

To print a document, select the “remove frame” tab in the upper right corner of the document. This will transfer you back to the document information page, where you should next select “view online.” This view will allow you to print a full view of the document without the page frame. To print, select “print” from the browser file menu at the top of the page and select the page you would like to print.

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Educational Materials

What type of educational resources does the OAAP provide?

The OAAP includes a series of educational essays through the free, online educational platform Connexions.These essays or modules, as Connexions calls them, feature documents from the OAAP and suggest ways to incorporate these documents and hemispheric approaches into the literature, history, and Spanish language and literature classrooms. Specifically, modules include images, topics for classroom discussion, reading passages, study questions, and summaries. Modules have been organized into courses, which are larger thematic concepts that reflect hemispheric approaches. Modules can be viewed individually or within the sequence of the designed course.

How do I access the OAAP's educational materials?

In the upper right hand corner of the OAAP main page, users can find the Educational Materials tab. Select this tab to access a list of thematic courses (see definition in the previous question). Select a course, such as “Slavery in the Americas.” By selecting this hyperlink, you will be transferred to the Connexions homepage for this course. In the upper left corner, you will find a table of contents that lists the different modules (see definition in the previous question) created for the study of slavery in the hemisphere. To go straight to a module, select the module title from the table of contents. To begin the course from the beginning, select “start” on the course’s homepage.

For whom are these materials designed?

The educational materials are designed for educators teaching lower level college courses and AP high school courses in literature, history, and Spanish language and literature. Although these materials are designed for higher levels of education, they might still provide guidance for teaching at other levels.

Who created these materials?

These educational materials were created by Rice University doctoral students studying English, History, and Hispanic Studies.

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