Robert D. Bowers and Dr. Thomas Pearcy, Latin American Studies
The Rey L. Pratt Center for Latin American Studies is new to the BYU scene. I created the Center at the request of Dr. Thomas Pearcy. This was done to assist students, faculty, and staff, as well as any other interested parties, in their studies of Latin America. The center is located at http://fhss.byuedu/history/pr@itt The academic portion of the center, including photos, documents, and additional links containing more information, is found in the resources section. As time went on, it became obvious that the Rey L. Pratt Center needed to be more than just a hub of links. It needed to become a research center with unique information available for researchers.
As part of the effort to turn this into a research center, I was able to go to Panama. Dr. Pearcy had negotiated the release of 8,000 pages from the Archives at the University of Panama. This was an enormous undertaking, considering the normal state of relations between Americans and Panamanians. While in Panama I was able to meet with several professors from the University of Panama, who are associates of Dr. Pearcy. They in turn introduced me to the Director of the National Archives, who as I found out is anti-American. It was because of the negotiating efforts of Dr. Pearcy that these documents were obtained. Instead of the original 8,000 documents, which had been planned on, it was made possible to bring back the entire index, which is close to 30,000 pages. The Panamanians were an enormous help with the logistics of copyinc, and packaging the huge quantity of documents.
I was also able to go to the National Archives with Professor Aparicio. While there, he and I searched through several volumes of the Gaceta Oficial, which was published during the early days of the Panamanian Republic. This is an extremely valuable resource of primary source documents. Due to the condition of the documents I was not able to photocopy them, but I was able to convince them to let me photograph several pages with the intention of letting the public know that this resource existed. In many of these volumes, there was quite a bit of foxing, due to acids or destructive agents found inside the paper. Over time the paper literally destroys itself. This was the case wth these volumes. The pages literally felt like they were about to crumble in my hands. I noticed that the archive did not have temperature and humidity controls, so there was water damage to some of the resources. A number of the documents and volumes had also been vandalized, including the Gaceta Qficial. While there, thanks to Dr. Aparicio, I was also able to obtain a photocopy of the Panamanian Constitution from 1903-1904. This resource was not available to the public, yet he was able to find a copy and get permission to photocopy it for the Pratt Center. This included the infamous article 136, which stated that the U.S. could intervene in Panamanian affairs whenever it so desired.
A number of additional documents, of which I had hoped to obtain copies or photographs, had been torn from their sources. In spite of this, several different types of primary source documents were obtained and brought back to the U.S. These will be valuable as they are published on the internet and are made available to researchers.
In terms of publishing the documents on the internet, this has been a time-consuming process. We were able to obtain a hi oh speed scanner thanks to the Kennedy Center and Dr. Pearcy. The scanner, however, did not arrive until late summer due to purchasing problems. This was frustrating for all involved. When the scanner finally arrived, it was missing several parts. Rather than wait any longer, the Kennedy Center went and purchased those from the bookstore. The process of scanning and then using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) began in earnest. To date, I have been able to scan several thousand pages and run OCR on several hundred of these documents. The OCR is what translates an image (scanned photocopy) into text recognizable as such by the computer. The OCR that came with the scanner is ideal for English but not very good for Spanish. I have spent many hours correcting every other word in the long process involved in editing these documents. It is very time-consuming. After several weeks of doing this, I ordered a personal copy of the most powerful OCR on the market, in order to expedite the process. This has helped quite a bit with the process, but the work is laborious and tedious. I have been able to get a lot more done by scanning the documents, bringing them home, and using my OCR (Omnipage), than I was able to do with the standard OCR.
I have also created PDF files in order to publish these documents faster. This process involves using Adobe Acrobat to create downloadable electronic files. A person doing research anywhere in the world can then click on a given link and download a file to view or print. The main problem I have encountered is that with this many documents, size is a serious factor. Downloadable files need to be within a certain size to download well on the internet. I have, however, found a workable solution, which my successor will be able to continue with. In the meantime, the process of scanning, editing, and writing the necessary htmi will continue under the supervision of the Kennedy Center until the project is completed.
Once the scanning is completed, the 30,000 documents from Panama will go to the Harold B. Lee library. Arrangements have been made to have the pages bound into volumes, and the BYU library will be the only library outside of Panama to have these documents. In fact, it will only be the second copy of these documents in existence. In the meantime, this will continue to be a valuable resource to researchers. One that is growing by the day.
