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Documenting Maritime Folklife: An Introductory Guide
Part 2: How to Document
Fieldnotes
Every researcher should maintain a field notebook. Fieldnotes are a record
of the researcher's activities in the field and should be written up before
the end of every day. They should include such things as general observations
about the progress of fieldwork, impressions of persons who have been interviewed,
summaries of conversations, descriptions of settings, and drawings and
diagrams of buildings and other artifacts. They should also include information
such as lighting conditions during photography and sources of extraneous
sounds picked up by a tape recorder that is useful for the interpretation
of project documents.1 Maintaining
a field notebook or fieldnote files in a portable computer are excellent
ways of preserving small bits of data which, although they may seem insignificant
at the time of entry, will take on importance after fieldwork is completed.
At the very least, fieldnotes provide a useful chronology of the fieldworker's
activities. At best, they are the intellectual core of a project's documentation,
preserving the observations and ruminations of the fieldworker as the project
unfolds.
Notes
1. In keeping with earlier remarks
about research ethics, fieldworkers should ensure the confidentiality of
fieldnotes that relate to highly sensitive information provided by informants,
and notes which contain the fieldworker's candid observations about individuals
in the study area. One technique is to record confidential information in
a log
separate from the main fieldnotes.
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