Comments for THATCamp Oral History Association 2012

Comment on Oral History and Metadata Standards by sschwinghamer

sschwinghamer — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:54:04 +0000

… and here is a Google Doc file to parachute in your thoughts on key information to be captured in metadata.

docs.google.com/document/d/1VwSyv2VBGn61NJF62vz5ERM9mBbm7X3jxBQKFA5BPC4/edit

Comment on Oral History and Metadata Standards by sschwinghamer

sschwinghamer — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 14:59:51 +0000

Hey session people,

Here’s the DC Terms file:

dl.dropbox.com/u/28481025/Proposed%20Dublin%20Core%20Metadata%20Structure.docx

Comment on What is Omeka and how can I use it? by Alexandra Coffman

Alexandra Coffman — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 01:21:39 +0000

I agree. I would like to know how to best utilize Omeka.

Comment on Participatory Digital Archives by Lauren

Lauren — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:35:28 +0000

Natalie, great questions, I’m looking forward to this discussion tomorrow. In our program, it feels like we can create double the work for ourselves curating “crowd sourced” content, in order to provide standardized output. Struggling with this as well for the SAA oral histories.

Comment on Geo-tagging oral histories by Arjun Sabharwal

Arjun Sabharwal — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:49:46 +0000

Thanks. I agree that DC is not robus enough, but DSpace — what we use for the OhioLINK DRC can be configured to make certain fields hyperlinked, and if we add the geospatial data in a way that let’s say Google Maps provides, it might just be a step. More tomorrow. I am looking forward to this discussion and learn from participants.

Comment on Geo-tagging oral histories by rush.140

rush.140 — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:44:45 +0000

I’m definitely interested in this topic. In my project I’m dealing with the issue of long video recordings of oral histories by elderly storytellers, who tend to talk about a wide variety of places in different temporal and topical contexts. I clearly can’t pin these to a single location. Getting the various places and times from the stories is already tricky, but presenting the information in a usable way is another thing.

I’m also wondering what the most flexible and portable way to encode this information once we have it. DC doesn’t seem to be robust enough, and coming up with my own format won’t make the information likely to be reused.

Comment on digitizing oral and video interviews by lauren.kata

lauren.kata — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:31:54 +0000

I can relate to these challenges, which are daunting enough in an institutional context, but even more so for all-volunteer projects. What I know in terms of current industry standards, archiving best practices, project management, etc., are all fine if I have the resources to accomplish. But with participatory/volunteer-based projects, how can I ensure sustainability? I’d love to hear more about your project and how small projects/groups can navigate through these problems.

Comment on Oral History and Metadata Standards by lauren.kata

lauren.kata — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:26:30 +0000

Yes. How can we do this without reinventing or duplicating existing tools (e.g., Oral History Cataloging manual, etc).

I’m also interested in putting effort into building stronger networks between oral history (metadata) practitioners, librarians, archivists, digital humanists.

Comment on Parts & Wholes by lauren.kata

lauren.kata — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:02:47 +0000

I’m interested in this session as well. What are our responsibilities to the interviewees/subjects when we break apart their narrative – how much freedom can we allow ourselves before intention and meaning are too altered?

Many thanks!

Comment on How to use digital video with Omeka by lauren.kata

lauren.kata — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 20:53:50 +0000

We’re looking at Omeka and I’d love to walk away with some lessons learned, and specifically with regard to decision making for web published content.

Comment on Parts & Wholes by sschwinghamer

sschwinghamer — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:05:51 +0000

As I remarked in my session proposal post, this is an important discussion that flows naturally into ideas of essential information (metadata) about oral history in a digital milieu. We are smack in the middle of a project that is working around these issues!

Comment on Digital Project-Driven Oral History as a Teaching Tool by sschwinghamer

sschwinghamer — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:02:05 +0000

We regularly run workshops to train students, community members and heritage professionals in oral history. I’d be enthusiastic to participate and contribute to the teaching aspect of this session if I can…!

Comment on Digital Project-Driven Oral History as a Teaching Tool by Arjun Sabharwal

Arjun Sabharwal — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 10:53:29 +0000

I like the idea of bringing this approach closer to those who have or have not done oral histories. The appeal of using mobile technology may attract younger audiences, but I wonder types of mobile digital technologies can be used effectively, given the length of some interviews. I did my first (and only) oral history interview in 2003 using a Sony Walkman recorder (instead of a cassette recorder, which I took along in case the digital plan failed), as it still allowed me to record for 3 hours max. How long can you record with a smartphone? Aside from that, this is a fascinating topic.

Comment on Marketing, Archiving, and Using Digital Multimeida Oral History Projects by Arjun Sabharwal

Arjun Sabharwal — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 10:35:43 +0000

This is an interesting approach to curating collections in multiple channels. I am trying to do that with Toledo’s Attic but couldn’t get these channels to sync. I will be interested in Soundcloud as well.

Comment on How to use digital video with Omeka by jhistorian

jhistorian — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:34:03 +0000

This sounds like a fascinating topic for discussion. I’m building an oral history project for my local Boy Scout Troop and this would certainly be very helpful in giving me ideas for incorporating digital video into an online web portal.

Comment on digitizing oral and video interviews by Erin Bell

Erin Bell — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 18:39:33 +0000

Sounds like a good session. I think there are several challenges here. The first is the process of (re-) encoding interviews in a digital format (which of course involves time, resources, etc). The second is doing so in a way that is as future-proof as possible, especially in regards to web standards. Web formats for audio and video are still sort of up in the air, with some browsers supporting MP3 and M4V, while others support OGG, WEBM, etc. Unlike images, you need multiple versions for different browsers (unless you use Flash, then you block out most mobile devices). We generally store our media in uncompressed formats, which is probably overkill in terms of fidelity (especially for audio). It's not a bad idea, but it definitely adds a layer of processing for any sort of online projects. It would be great to have a system like NPR's Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE), which not only separates content from design, but also separates content from presentation across multiple instances. So in the case of web media, such a system might take the digital archival copy and create web-friendly versions on demand as needed for different projects. Sounds doable actually, given the right circumstances. ... I may be getting carried away. :)

Comment on Flashy Reconstitutioning by natalie.milbrodt

natalie.milbrodt — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 03:14:30 +0000

What I like best is that you were willing to go a new direction based on the interests of your various stakeholders. Maybe we could all discuss the unforeseen developments in our projects that were influenced by people who are excited about the work and want to have a hand in shaping it.

Comment on Help with Unconferences by About posting your session | THATCamp Oral History Association 2012

About posting your session | THATCamp Oral History Association 2012 — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 20:39:17 +0000

[…] of an idea, that you would like to pursue at THATCamp. Jim Calder wrote a nice post on the blog, “Getting the most out of an unconference,” that may help guide your thinking on the event and your session […]

Comment on Campers by About posting your session | THATCamp Oral History Association 2012

About posting your session | THATCamp Oral History Association 2012 — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 20:35:01 +0000

[…] Campers […]

Comment on Flashy Reconstitutioning by Shannon Simpson

Shannon Simpson — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:58:47 +0000

Erin, your re-uses are fantastic. They serve to expand and enhance the oral histories. And, yes, exactly, sometimes this re-purposing may be the only way that people actually encounter these interviews. Perhaps, it’s something we should all be doing?

Comment on Flashy Reconstitutioning by Erin Bell

Erin Bell — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:47:49 +0000

Hi Shannon, this sounds like an interesting session. At CPHDH we've re-used our interview audio in a whole variety of ways (YouTube , mobile apps, touch screen kiosks, etc). I agree that this type of re-use can really be helpful in selling outsiders on the value of collecting the interviews in the first place. It's a lot easier to show value through highlights, clips, and other more easily-digested re-constitutions than it is to just assure someone (who may never listen to those hundreds of hours of audio) that this is all worth collecting and preserving.

Comment on Parts & Wholes by Arjun Sabharwal

Arjun Sabharwal — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 01:31:26 +0000

A session on this aspect of oral history should be very interesting. Breaking larger oral histories into smaller unit has many advantages: you can tag smaller units more accurately with geospatial data (I have not worked with Ohms, so I will be interested in what it can do), and you can leave out sections that might pose ethical issues such as privacy, and legal issues caused by libel and slander, which can occur in interviews. Thanks for the topic!

Comment on Geo-tagging oral histories by Arjun Sabharwal

Arjun Sabharwal — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:18:29 +0000

Thanks. Your topic sounds fascinating, and you are on the right track by adding the geographical locations. At some point, they should be mapped to coordinates that can be interpreted by ESRI’s ArcGIS, QGIS (open source), HistoryPin, Google Maps, etc. Have you worked with social scientists on mapping the movements of immigrant groups?

Comment on Geo-tagging oral histories by sschwinghamer

sschwinghamer — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:12:47 +0000

This would certainly be a useful discussion for me! I work out of an immigration history museum, so locating our oral history (and everything else) is extremely important. Although I don’t have a lot of experience with GIS, we are working with a collection management system that provides (DC-compliant) geolocation, and we’re experimenting with controlled vocabularies for place names in transcripts, etc…

Comment on Crowdfunding Oral History Projects by jhistorian

jhistorian — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 16:45:43 +0000

I agree. This does sound like a fascinating idea.

Comment on Crowdfunding Oral History Projects by Arjun Sabharwal

Arjun Sabharwal — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 12:12:53 +0000

Crowd funding sounds interesting. It may also promote crowdsourcing some part of the curator’s job.

Comment on Help with Unconferences by Arjun Sabharwal

Arjun Sabharwal — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:23:13 +0000

Thanks, Jim. I’ll be posting one sometime this week. — Arjun

Comment on Help with Unconferences by jamesdcalder

jamesdcalder — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:30:47 +0000

Thank you for signing up! Proposals can be posted right in this section. If you’re having any trouble, please let me know.

Thanks,

Jim

Comment on Help with Unconferences by Arjun Sabharwal

Arjun Sabharwal — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 17:20:54 +0000

Thank you for organizing this ThatCamp. Where did you want the proposals to be posted?

Comment on About by Erin Bell

Erin Bell — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:36:58 +0000

:idea: :twisted: :oops: