Hello! My name is Rayya Chek, and I’m one of the interns working with GBH, working this summer on digitizing the unedited interviews recorded for the 1989 documentary “The U.S. and the Philippines: In Our Image.” . A little background about me, I am studying at Tufts University for both a BFA/BA in Studio Arts and Sociology respectively. I was interested in this internship because I grew up with GBH, through the PBS television programs produced there. In addition, I was working on a personal book project for a class that was about family history and uncovering history through dialogue. As I worked on my personal project, I watched many documentaries and read books in hopes to understand my history. I thought that working on this project is relative to my journey as I used documentaries, books and others to learn about Cambodian history. I also believe that this internship would provide insight into what I would want to do in the near future.
During my time in GBH, my main responsibility was to catalog the tapes and digitally compile the interview tapes. In the process, I would produce two versions of the interview, one for public access and one for preservation for the Library of Congress. My secondary responsibility was to generate transcripts for these interviews and correct them as necessary. I worked closely with the other intern, Tommy Lim to complete these goals.
I did have the opportunity to engage in another project, which was to evaluate and propose revisions to the current statement on metadata, transcript and content warnings on the AAPB, currently under review by the AAPB team. While Tommy focused on the contents of the statement, I focused on the UI aspect, which was mainly the position of the statement as well as the contact information in relation to the media player.
Though my time with the internship is nearing to a close, I’d like to thank Casey Davis, Miranda Villesvik and Alison Smith for guiding me throughout this project as well as everyone from the GBH Archives department. Perhaps, I hope that people who are in similar positions as I am, can learn their history from using this documentary as a potential resource.
Rayya Chek is an undergraduate student at Tufts University pursuing BFA/BA in Studio Art and Sociology. As an artist, he focuses on personal identity, and history through drawings and photographs. He is also a hip-hop dancer in the Boston community.
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