During the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020, when work from home was imposed and most outdoor activities and social commitments were heavily curtailed, I maximally utilized the available time in structuring and organizing my family letters and documents. During 2020-21 I managed to organize around 5000 handwritten letters and other documents dating back to 1870s: The organization process involved assigning a unique identifier to each physical letter document, dating each letter/doc, and labeling the writer and addressee of each letter and doc. Then the documents/letters were sorted, categorized, indexed, and inserted into plastic protector sheets for preservation, and placed in named phsyical folders. Following processes began to evolve with practice: Adding an index entry in an excel sheet for each physical item, sending a batch of letters/docs for scanning, receiving back the batch of items and their scans, and saving the scanned files in designated computer folders. Then sending a batch of scans to the typist for transcription, receiving the computer readable transcriptions from typists, entering them into dated word documents, and then editing them and also formatting them began to evolve. This project is still a work in progress and this blog post is being updated every few months to reflect the additional learnings.
The project which had started out as a Family Documents/Letters preservation effort has now morphed into a Social History Archival Project. Eventually, this archive will become the primary data for writing a historical saga of the family travails, a window on the social history that would result in a series of videos, books, research papers or even novels or their adaptation. I am looking forward to my children or their children or other family members who opt for social sciences or can appreciate the importance of social history and may decide to continue the effort in some of these genres! My inspiration is, of course, "Kar-e-Jehan Daraz Hai" by Qurratul Ain Hyder (my father's cousin), Shajra Project by SMKA Zaidi, and UT Austin's Social History Museum as explained in my following two posts and am looking forward to others to continue the effort:
