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An Interview with Nina Perdomo, Herencia Crowdsourcing Intern

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A headshot of Nina Perdomo
Nina Perdomo, an intern working on transcribing the Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents crowdsourcing campaign. [Photo provided by Nina Perdomo]
Today’s interview is with Nina Perdomo, an intern working on transcribing the Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents crowdsourcing campaign at the Law Library of Congress.

Describe your background.

My family consists of both Peruvian and Venezuelan backgrounds. I was born in Peru and immigrated with my family to Miami, Florida, as a young child. Having grown up in such a culturally diverse city has made me incredibly proud of my heritage. In high school, I was presented with the opportunity to intensively study Italian language and culture. This is when I started to become interested in appreciating grammar, as well as classical antiquity. All of these experiences have made me a lover of language and history, which is represented in my academic career and future aspirations.

What is your academic/professional history?

I am currently an undergraduate student at Florida State University, majoring in classical archaeology and Italian, with minors in anthropology and English. During my time in college, I have completed various classics-related internships, such as being an archaeology intern and contributing to different excavation sites’ virtual museums. I am very grateful to have been a recipient of The Rodney Reeves Ph.D. Scholarship Award in Classics, which enabled me to curate an exhibit in Italy during the current summer 2021 semester. I have also received the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship for the fall 2021 semester, in which I will tutor Italian students virtually. Now, I am very fortunate to have this experience with the Library of Congress’ Herencia collection, which has allowed me to combine my interest in history with my appreciation for my native language. Although this is different from archaeology and ancient studies, I have been able to apply my knowledge in Latin and Spanish to this project, while also learning much about Spanish history. This project has helped me broaden my knowledge, and I plan to implement my skills learned here in my future career.

How would you describe your job to other people?

My responsibility as a member of the Herencia Crowdsourcing Campaign internship program is to assist in making documents from this collection more accessible. I do this by reviewing or transcribing pages in Spanish, Catalan, Latin, or a combination of these through cooperative work with my peers.

Why did you want to work at the Library of Congress?

It has been an incredible opportunity to contribute to a library that is such an important resource, and a project that is so admirable. Helping provide accessible and reliable documents to others has always been a personal goal of mine, and this internship was the perfect opportunity to do so through an honorable research library.

What is the most interesting fact you’ve learned about the Law Library of Congress?

A very interesting fact that I have learned about the Law Library of Congress is just how extensive it is. I was surprised to see the diversity in their usage of media for the Rare Book Collections. Here, one can find videos of people discussing items in this collection along with detailed pictures of the physical documents. This gives website visitors the opportunity to get a unique view of the documents combined with useful audio commentary, such as the video on Harry Truman’s Law School Notebook. Although the videos are brief, the combination of visual and auditory support make for a great learning experience.

What’s something most of your co-workers do not know about you?

I play guitar on my free time! It helps me focus whenever I get stuck on a task for school or work. I highly recommend it!

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