THE FINAL PROGRESS REPORT FOR JAY RUBY'S OAK PARK RESEARCH

Research materials generated by my Oak Park Research,
packed and waiting to be taken to the Oak Park Historical Society sometime this spring.

I have now completed my study of Oak Park. I started in the fall of 1998 and sent the final portrait to my distributor in late October. Rather than wait until the end of the year when I would normally send out a quarterly progress report, I am sending it now. This is the last of the reports. I will keep the listserv active but do not think I will use it often. My web pages at http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/opp will remain active for an indefinite period. I cannot begin to list all of the many people who assisted me - literally hundreds. The community of Oak Park has been a very welcoming and helpful place. The community of other visual anthropologists have also been a huge resource. I thank you all.

A Few Final Thoughts

When I started this project, I had several things in mind to accomplish. I knew that my retirement was not far away and I wanted some work that would continue into retirement. After many years of being highly critical of the limitations of ethnographic film, I needed to go into the field and test some of my ideas. While looking for a place to conduct this research I re-discovered my hometown and was astonished at the changes that had occured in my absence. When I decided to go to Oak Park, I was able to satisfy another need - to do something autobiographical. Finally, Oak Park allowed to explore the concept of studying sideways, that is, to study people very much like myself. Something that few anthropologists had tried. About six months into the research I discovered that I would need to package the result of my work in an unusual way - as a multimedia interactive ethnography that would not be a film or a book but a combination of texts, photographs and video. This meant learning how to work with software in a fairly complex way that at times took me away from the ethnography - something that was very frustrating but necessary. It is too soon to really know the impact of this work on myself or others. Academic work filters into the progression of ideas very slowly. Reviews are in the works. Some people have started quoting it but it will be years before the dust settles. My initial reaction to the completion of this work is to be exhausted by its finish and delighted by it at the same time. I know it has have and will have a profound impact on me but at this point I am uncertain what that will be other than my renewed interest in Oak Park and the friends I have made there. At the writing of this final report, I am taking a break from things academic and doing some family history - a nice diversion. When finished I plan to co-edit a history of visual anthropology - no field work. Lots of library and computer study.

That's all folks!