I imagine most of my classmates and I will find it hard to write about anything other than the challenges of researching such a specific topic for our final paper. The challenges I’ve been facing come in many different forms, including, but not limited to: not being able to find many sources that are pertinent to my research, Gallica1 taking its sweet time to load results, and me/my computer not knowing how to translate anything from French to English.
The most blatant problem is simply not finding the results that I want, especially in big archival sites like Gallica. Because my piece is titled Concert Champêtre2, I keep getting results that have the word ‘Concert’ and ‘Champêtre’, but not the two put together, even when I type them in parentheses. Furthermore, when I do find an entry from a newspaper or article that contains “Concert Champêtre,” it usually just mentions it in passing instead of talking about the premiere of the piece or how it has affected the values of Paris.
What is even more frustrating than the lack of useful results is the lack of English that I am able to pull from the sources that do seem promising. An example is the concert program that I found while I was searching through microfilm3 in the library basement. I was excited when I stumbled upon a whole three pages that looked like they were about only my piece, but I was less excited after I tried to convert the scan into a word document.
I’ve spent multiple hours copying text from that microfilm onto a google doc so that I can get a somewhat good translation of it online. It’s exciting when I finally get to the end of French paragraphs and see what they have to say, but gosh darn it is time consuming.
Finally, the problem that ties everything together into a devilish little box of French research is the fact that Gallica and other French websites are, in fact, run by French servers. This means it takes a long time to load results, even on my gaming pc that is connected to the internet via ethernet cables.
Despite all of this hardship, I really don’t find myself in a bad place in terms of the research in this paper. The main key that I am missing is eye witness accounts of the premiere of this piece, specifically something talking about WHO was at the premiere of the piece and WHY they went to it. Otherwise, I think I will be ready soon to begin writing :).