The Illustrations of El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno, A Glance At Peru in 1615

This digital project aimed to create an easy to use and free online resource for a user to navigate through some of the fascinating illustrations depicted by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala in his manuscript titled, El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno or translated into English The First New Chronicle and Good Government. The software I decided to use for this project was Omeka through Reclaim Hosting. The project site is under my own domain. This digital exhibit will have the illustrations for a user to view along with transcriptions and a translation to English for each one of the images. This Omeka site also has a section that focuses on who Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala was and how he was an important figure during the Colonial Period in Peru.

This Omeka site is designed to browse through a selection of illustrations. All of the illustrations are from the El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno collection. All of the current illustrations come from one collection. The illustrations are broken down into three exhibits, within those exhibits are exhibit pages, separated by subject matter. A user can click into the exhibit from the ‘browse exhibits’ tab and find a description of the overall exhibit and then click into the individual exhibit pages to explore the illustrations of that specific subject matter. If a user is interested in a specific image, they can click on that image to be taken to the item page to see the according metadata information. One can browse through and search all items uploaded on the ‘browse items’ tab.

I have selected a few chapters from the book to highlight that I feel are the most interesting and take a look at the comparison between the Christian faith of Spain and the Incan faith in Peru during the early 1600s. I also chose to include the chapter on Incan customs and holidays as well as the Spanish conquest of the Incas. I felt that these were the most important chapters to showcase the images from El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno. For each of the images I have uploaded, I have included the metadata (according to Dublin core), the image, and created tags to go along with the specific illustration.

The main source for this project was from The Royal Library of Denmark. This archive owns the original copy of the physical manuscript and completed an extensive project to digitize the entire manuscript. The John Carter Brown Library-Peru Collection also has an online archive that includes some of the images of the illustrations from the manuscript. My digital project differs from the John Carter Brown Library project in the sense that a user could click onto one of the images and see the title of the image, and the complete transcription, as well as a translation to English, which the other project does not include. This Omeka site digital project would differ from the Royal Library of Denmark’s digital archive in the sense that my project will not include the written manuscript of the book, just the illustrations along with annotations on the image for the user to hover over and see the transcription and translation.

What’s the point? This digital projects differs in a few significant ways from other available online resources. This project is an aid in creating an online space that combines aspects of many resources. This Omeka site solely focuses on the illustrations from El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno with transcriptions and a translation to English for each one of the images. This site breaks down the images and categorizes them by subject tags for easier user navigation and an easy to use design within the site. This resource is for scholars, students, and those generally interested in Peruvian history from the Colonial period.

There was some struggles with tackling a project of this nature. The first and most glaring issue was the sheer amount of illustrations from the original manuscript. Since I started this project I have decided to trim down the number of digitized images from El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno that I would include in the online exhibit, there are about 400 illustrations in the manuscript and I have highlighted around 50 of them. I have selected a few chapters from the book to highlight that I feel are the most interesting. The second struggle was with this content there are several languages. This manuscript was written in Spanish and Quechua (this is the ancient Incan language) so there are words and phrases that do not have an English translation. There are also many spellings of the same words of locations, names, and terms. A user may see different spellings throughout the site.

• Website Features:
  • Exhibits by topic
    • The goal with these tags was to organize the illustrations into ‘exhibits’ on Omeka based off of these tags. For example, I have all the illustrations depicting images of Christian faith in one exhibit, all the illustrations with the Spanish conquest in another exhibit, and so on. These exhibits each have a theme and include captions under each image with an explanation to why I chose to group these illustrations together and what Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala was writing about these illustrations.
  • Finding aid
    • Within the site a user can search by tags to see all the different items within that particular subject tag. Omeka has a great finding aid built into their set up which makes it very easy for a user to find what they are looking for.
  • Item meta data
    • With each ‘item’ or illustration that I included on the site has a set of Dublin core Meta data that a user can look at in more detail when one clicks on each item within the collection.
  • Translations to English
    • I have included translations to English, however there are many words that are from the ancient Peruvian language, Quechua, that do not translate to any other language and those have been left as transcriptions.
  • Illustrations
    • This project is centered around the illustrations from the manuscript and while the scanned images of the manuscript are very interesting to look at, I will not include images of the manuscript, this digital project is just to showcase the illustrations from El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno

This project is still a work in progress, and in the future I plan to keep this Omeka site running and work to upload and annotate the rest of the illustrations from the manuscript. With this continued work, I hope to create more exhibit pages with other subject matter found in the manuscript.

URL to project site: http://ashleypalazzo.org/IllustrationsofElPrimerNuevaCoronicaYBuenGobierno/