Senior thesis reflection

It's almost at the end of the road with the MUSE program for us senior students. It's almost at the end of the chapter for us and beginning of a new chapter for all of us. I would like to acknowledge my supporters (MUSE faculty and staffs, my family and friends) who believed in me and encouraged me to pursue my goals. I truly am thankful.

My experience with senior thesis was pretty difficult than I anticipated. I started off with Deaf Studies collection with Laurent Clerc, a Deaf and Mute educator from France, and ended up with a thesis focusing on Online Exhibition and a case study at American School for the Deaf.  The transition wasn't easy and I consider this challenge as an learning experience to help me overcome any obstacles later in life.

I'm currently working on revising my thesis paper before submitting for final review and advisor signatures. Recently,  my 1:3 (one to three) meeting with Dr. Julie Decker, Dr. Mary Beth Kitzel and a sign language interpreter, we had a healthy discussion about certain areas with my paper which needed some revisions, filled up and reviewed my poster before finalizing it.

Intersession Plan

The semester is at the end and intersession break is just around the corner. The goal of my research during the intersession is to gather more data of Deaf Studies archives;  to research data of deaf institutions with deaf studies’ archives, to develop survey questions for future participators’ assessment needs, and to collect data through video call interviews from institutions for the Deaf’s archive faculty and volunteers based on their assessment needs.  Overall, I will be developing basic structure designs and online training guidelines to fulfill faculty and volunteers’ assessment needs.

Senior thesis, Susana Flores

After working on my co-op with American School of the Deaf (ASD) during recent summer with researches and cataloging their archive. I realized that American School for the Deaf has tremendous collections related to deaf studies, its history of first deaf institution, their founding fathers and e.t.c. of historical artifact but they didn't have a proper digital archive to share with their community. Right there was a breaking point for me because after taking up Museum studies course with digital age, these historical artifacts and informations should be shared with public via online. The concept of developing proper digital archive doesn't only apply to ASD but hopefully applies to other libraries with deaf studies collection / archive.

I already knew as a fact that American School of the Deaf is in the process of building their connection with Connecticut Digital Archive under University of Connecticut library. I'm uncertain about Gallaudet University with their digital archive since there is insufficient information about their historical artifacts online.  For my senior thesis project, I will need to do more research and do some interviews with curators / directors about their digital archives and their ownership rights with their archive artifacts. Hopefully, we could discuss about opportunity of develop and improvise their digital archive from there.

Senior Thesis: Possible digital collection

I'm considering about working with collaborated digital collections between few institutions  to label, categorize and tag the Laurent Clerc Collections. Laurent Clerc was a deaf teacher from France and he was one of the founding fathers who helped established American School of the Deaf in Connecticut back in 1817. He worked with Minister Thomas H.  Gallaudet and taught him French Sign Language during their voyage from France to America. 

The Laurent Clerc collections consists vary of Mr. Clerc's personal items and important documents. Hopefully, i could have the opportunity to develop a thesis on how to convince these institutions with shared collections to digitalize their parts of the collections to share with the public.  

According to my experience with my internship at American School for the Deaf, their collections wasn't entirely digitalized. It would be great to encourage these institutions to digitalize their collections staring with American School of the Deaf since this institution has larger collection of the founding fathers' personalized items than other institutions. 

American School for the Deaf

Gallaudet University