After 18 months of talking with 126 German immigrants and/or their children here in Waterloo Region, work has now begun on a book for the community, tentatively entitled Germans of Waterloo Region.
Over the course of the last 18 months, 65 students, faculty, and community members have put in 2,000+ hours of work to coordinate the project and prepare the 110 interviews for the book and future research. Each interview alone needs about 12 hours of work for conducting, transcribing, proofreading, annotating, and encoding. This is by far the largest project the Centre has ever undertaken in its 11-year history.
(Because of the amount of work each interview needs, and because our human resources are limited, we’re no longer accepting new interviews.)
Twenty-three authors, including graduate students and professors, will contribute to the book, using the interviews as the basis for each chapter. Although we can’t set a publication date yet, we will have the manuscript done by February or March of next year.
Follow the WCGS on Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch. For updates on the book, follow #GermansofWR on Twitter.