In researching Providence's Chinatown, I found that I quickly collected dozens, and eventually hundreds, of photos, as well as web pages and archives I needed to follow up on. Tracking where each one came from, which I wanted to return to for a more detailed look, and anything else about the images, quickly became a challenge.
I'm sharing access to my original spreadsheet so you can see how I organized my record keeping, and will also share templates (below) which you can use to organize your own. You don't have to use my system, but I'll share how it works and why.
My photo tracking spreadsheet for Providence's Chinatown (.xlsx)
First, it's a working document, not a formal bibliography, so my priority was recording as much as I could, but it's not a "perfect" document, whatever that means.
My photo tracking spreadsheet for Providence's Chinatown.
Spreadsheet noting buildings by construction/destruction dates, addresses, building or business names, notes and links.
Using these tracking spreadsheets can surface important connections -- using names from newspaper articles, court records, and other sources, I have been able to reconstruct a rough "directory" of who lived or worked at each address in Providence's Chinatown. But be aware: these records are incredibly fragmentary, and partial -- and relying primarily on these kinds of accounts, with their racist views and understandings, risks giving those perspectives too much control over the ways we understand these histories, especially when they are our own. Saidiya Hartman has written about the limits of the archive as a resource for knowledge of the lives of enslaved people during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the possibilities of what she terms critical fabulation in overcoming these limits. Jamelle Bouie writes about the limitations of ledgers and numerically-based analysis based in the bureaucracy of enslavement, and what it cannot tell us. Find more information and links in the inspirations page
Spreadsheet noting buildings by construction/destruction dates, addresses, building or business names, notes and links.
As you learn more about the history of the place, take note of dates relevant to your search (as distinct from events relevant to the community) -- for example, when street names changed, when diasters or attacks occurred, when businesses visible on the street moved in or closed. I keep a short running list of these in an "overview" tab of my spreadsheet, as a quick reference when interpreting photos and maps. When a street name appears differently on a map or in a news articlefor the first time, I note that the street name changed between that and the prior mention.
In researching Truckee, California's Chinatown, I noted a tower with distinctive columns on the hill above the site of Chinatown. Unfortunately, it was owned by a famously racist leader of the white supremacist group responsible for expelling Chinatown. In this case, the tower serves as an important landmark for dating photographs.
According to a plaque on the site, the tower was built in 1895, which was about 17 years after the first Chinatown of Truckee was destroyed in a fire. So any photos of the area showing the tower are too late to show Chinatown at that site. Also see notes on landmarks in Searching for images.
Buildings with unique names, or with uniquely named businesses (a hotel, theater, or restaurant, for example) make for good search terms. Note if possible when the buildings were built, torn down, or modified, or when businesses opened, closed, or changed names.
Changing street names can be challenging to track, but can also narrow your search to a specific time range. In Providence, Empire Street was called Walker Street until 1901; Paine Street was called Shimbo Alley starting sometime in 1911. These dates can serve as search terms for specific time ranges, and help to date maps and photographs.
Cars, telegraph wires, and other infrastructural changes can all help to establish dates in photographs, and keeping a list of these at hand in your tracking spreadsheet or notes is also helpful.