Testing workflows for publishing searchable oral history online

1. TECHNOLOGY STACKS FOR
NAVIGATING NARRATIVE:
A WORDPRESS >> POPUP
ARCHIVE >> OHMS
WORKFLOW FOR YOUR
INTERVIEWS ONLINE
BROOKE BRYAN
INSTRUCTOR OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATION
ANTIOCH COLLEGE

2. JUANITA SHOCKEY
HARRIS, QUILTMAKER

3. • Why Here/Why Now Project
• Reporter, Yellow Springs News
• MA, Oral History Methodology
• Community Voices Coordinator, WYSO (GA)
• Oral History in the Digital Age, Collecting and
Disseminating Groups (IMLS, MATRIX)
• Instructor of Cooperative Education at Antioch
College
• Director, OHLA (Oral History in the Liberal Arts:
Experiential Pedagogy for High-Impact
Undergraduate Learning) GLCA collaborative
Not an archivist; ontological/phenomenological, deeply
held belief in the power of narrative to be impactful
LOCATING MY PRACTICE

4. WORKSHOP
OUTCOMES
• Understand what tools are available
for processing, indexing, and sharing
oral histories
• Choose a tool that best meets your
needs, or to envision a “technology
stack” that pairs multiple tools
• To understand how the ‘digital era’
complicates informed consent

5. A FRIENDLY COFFEE SHOP QUERY
• 89-year old Appalachian Quiltmaker
• It’s her birthday and Christmas is coming
• House full of quilts
• Document the quilts she’s made
• Create some sort of oral history for the family
https://vimeo.com/49081409

6. • 3 visits to Juanita’s home
• 11 hours of audio total (b-roll)
• 546 images
• Images taken of the scene
• Wanted to tell the story of the story
http://thisoldquilt.org/quilt-stories-juanita/
CONTEXT

7. Still, things that Juanita said lingered in
my mind. I had condensed an hour and
forty five minutes of her narrative into 6
minutes. Much was lost for her family,
and nearly everything of interest to
scholars was not present.
I needed a new tool.
LOSS OF MEANING

8. • Basic machine-generated transcription
• Upgrade to premium machine-generated
transcription
• The transcription is synced to the audio
file, and can be embedded as a player
• You can download the transcript as a
plain text file to use as you please
https://www.popuparchive.com/
POPUP ARCHIVE

9. • Audio only
• Exceedingly expensive for larger
collections (priced by the linear hour,
an Enterprise account begins at
$150/month)
• Accents or poor recording quality can
render the speech-to-text
transcription almost useless.
LIMITATIONS OF
POPUP ARCHIVE

10. Pop Up Archive Item: "Juanita Shockey Harris_ interview.mp3" :
https://www.popuparchive.com/collections/5402/items/42553
Transcript for file: Juanita_Shockey_Harris_interview.mp3
my name is Brooke Bryan is December 7th 2000 2011 Shania mini home love
Juanita here to talk about her life life and work as a quiltmaker 180 can you tell me your
full name I am Juanita Harris through 18 ashaki Harris my maiden name maiden name
was shocked if I live I live then I was born in Ravenswood West Virginia Outlet country
in I have lived in West Virginia all my life until I was I was married except two years
we've moved to a high on lived in Ohio that was my 7th and 8th grade the Country
School in my birthday the nights the 20th 1922 fish when I was born what are some of
your earliest earliest memories that you can think of you do you remember what your
home was like as a child remember the landscape look like around your phone one of
one of the homes you lived in will my father work for people Ariel worked on a farm and
we had he had horses horses we don't know what he done always work with horses we
had her own orange chicken cows and pigs eggs with Mod very few groceries and
daddy would go to town town in your response to Little Things chocolate candy
probably a dime's worth of candy but that wasn't nice I'd sac bam and
POPUP ARCHIVE WITH AN
APPALACHIAN ACCENT: BASIC

11. Pop Up Archive Item: "Juanita Shockey Harris_ interview.mp3" :
https://www.popuparchive.com/collections/5402/items/42553
Transcript for file: Juanita_Shockey_Harris_interview.mp3
It's. My name is Bruce Bryan is over seven thousand a less. I really love. Juanita. Here to talk about her life's
work as a quote maker. Juanita. Can you tell me or for me I am one need a hair serie one a just shocked to hear my maiden
name was shocking. I lived and. I was born. Good West Virginia outlook Andras and. I lived in West Virginia all my life until I
was married which except two years we moved to a high and lived in Ohio. And that was my seventh and eighth grade. I
went to a country school. And my birthday. If I'm not right. Twenty S. and nineteen twenty two is when I was born. What are
some of your earliest memories that you can think of you. Do you remember what your life as a child. You remember the
landscape like one of one of the homes that. Well my father worked for people. Air or else. Worked on a farm. And we had.
He had horses we done all right he doesn't always work with horses we had a row. Or own shift and. Calcine and pay.
We've bought very few groceries. And that he would go to town. And he always projects a little fact that care they probably
a dime's worth of candy but that was an eye sight sack. Man and. We did have been just different in different places we
lived. I remember two places we live and. We live and. He. You dumb farmer. I was born in the afternoon. He'd just come
from out in the field and was putting the horses away. My mother went out of the closure on to call him that she was in
labor. But after the baby was a common man it was me and it was. I was born in the afternoon. You have just like I had one
sister. And so. I don't know. I think my aunt. Her sister come. When I was being born with heart I was born in the country
that he went and got the doctor or went to the doctor. I was able. I remember that house and I don't remember but my sister
was a little bit jealous I'm a because mom put me in the baby crib. And the baby. They had that we had and. When I think
she hung close up stairs in the wintertime to dry. And she heard me crying and she come down to see what the problem
was. My sister had. Bit my finger across she didn't she were to would just stop and the baby got too much attention. And
my mother's talked about that a long did you have any fun. Sure. We had to go shut the chickens up after we moved to
another place where we raised. We had lots of chickens. And Soledad. And we had. It was our job to get down and shut the
chickens up. Of aiding and. I was a little bit of fright because it was beginning to get dark. We watched stations after I got a
little bigger. The two of the two us two girls wore stages well before that we had another baby brother. And our we had a
baby brother and. When we lived in this house where the. The checksums wells we had two brothers. One baby was born.
The last one. So I had a sister and two brothers. You know it's a nice size family. My mother my day and was your
grandmother….
POPUP ARCHIVE WITH AN
APPALACHIAN ACCENT: PREMIUM

12. • Provides a collaborative media
management platform with strong
upload functionality
• Provides hosting on Popup Archive
servers (TOS, private collections) OR
on Internet Archive servers (public)
• Embed player is a short-cut to
synced, searchable navigable oral
history content online.
POPUP ARCHIVE STILL RELEVANT:

13. • Work with video
• Have a limited budget
• Use Chrome extensively
• Speak exclusively to scholarly
audiences or are interested in
forwarding the notion that archiving
richly navigable collections of
interviews is scholarly publishing
POPUP ISN’T YOUR TOOL IF YOU:

14. • Require natural language mapping.
In other words, if you work with oral history
collections that deal with concepts beyond
the words spoken, you’ll want to
thematically categorize segments of your
content to aid navigability and add
keywords.
How will researchers find your content?
How will you move through your own
interviews?
POPUP ALSO ISN’T YOUR TOOL IF
YOU:

15. The Oral History Metadata Synchronizer is a viewer
developed by Doug Boyd of the Louie B. Nunn Center for
Oral History at the University of Kentucky.
• OHMS syncs a media file (audio or video) to a text file
• OHMS does not require you to have a transcription. If you
have one, follow the transcription guidelines and upload
the text file.
• In OHMS, you create an INDEX right in the tool
• Your media can live anywhere— all you need is a url
OHMS

16. 1. Interview metadata (the basics- requires
title, interviewee/interviewer/url of
media)
2. Upload a transcript (if you have one)
3. Preview!
4. Sync!
5. Index!
https://ohms.uky.edu/browse-
interviews.php
OHMS: BEHIND THE SCENES

17. 1. You’ll need to install OHMS on a server.
This requires moving files by FTP. It’s not
difficult, but it is new for most people.
2. You’ll need a log-in name from the Nunn
Center. It’s automated.
3. Your media needs to live on a streaming
server (your wordpress website, youtube,
your institutional archives, etc.)
4. You’ll need a website to embed the OHMS-
ed interview into (for public viewing).
OHMS: WHAT TO NOTE

18. • You are not interested in learning new
technology or have no one you can sit
with to perform FTP transfers and to
explore a new user interface.
• If you don’t have a web presence where
you wish to display your collection
(yoursite.com)
• If you lack an interest in ‘doing stuff’
with the meaning within your narratives
OHMS IS NOT FOR YOU IF:

19. • Stories excerpted from the narrative
using video editing & YouTube/Vimeo
• Longer-form storytelling using text
and media in a content management
system (Wordpress)
• PopUp Archive (turn-key, but limited)
• OHMS (dynamic, but more involved)
FOUR PUBLISHING METHODS:

20. • A technology stack is a thoughtful
combination of tools and platforms
• A technology stack will address
• Your workflow from the moment of file
creation on your recorder or camera
• Where the media lives
• How the media is accessed or viewed
• How the media is preserved
TECHNOLOGY STACKS: THE
HOLY GRAIL

21. FERPA compliant technology stack in
development:
Digital Recorder/Camera >>
Google Drive/Hard Drive (QC/releases) >>
PopUp (transcriptions & redundancy) >>>
Internet Archive (streaming & preservation) >>
Take the transcript & media file url to OHMS >>
Sync & Index in OHMS >>
Embed script on public display page
(Wordpress website)
THE HOLY GRAIL: I’M STILL
SEARCHING

22. • Holds promise for use and access— new
user interfaces allow us to move through
media in new ways— media is primary,
retains gesture, intonation, context, etc.
• Easy to imagine new audiences
• Complicates Informed Consent
• Born-digital technologies impact decisions
made during project planning, collection,
curation, and dissemination
STEP BACK: HOW DO THESE
TOOLS CHANGE WHAT WE DO?

23. Brooke Bryan
Antioch College
bbryan@antiochcollege.org
@whyherenow | ohla.info | 937.902.3806
LET’S DISCUSS!