Oral History Brainstorming

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: May 14, 2020 by Jonathan Rochkind
4 min read

Let’s list all possible projects/initiatives/features we can think of to advance Oral Histories in Digital Collections.

We’re going to start by just listing them all out, and then at our in-person meeting we will try to identify some of the higher-priority items, and work out what steps are needed to accomplish them, and end up with a plan for what to work on next and how.

Each of these ideas will include:

  • Planning/decision-making

  • Software/technical implementation

  • Metadata/data-entry/ingest (initial and ongoing)

Different ideas may have different proportions of each, our resources available need to be accounted for.

Some of these ideas may be mutually exclusive with others, or render others unnecessary, we’ll try to note such linkages when recording here.

Rather than list “replicate functionality of oral histories microsite”, I’d like to encourage us to identify what individual “features” are necessary to do this/missing currently.

 

Feb 12 2020 analysis/prioritization exercise. Post-its represent features listed below.

Completed features/projects

  • OHMS-like functionality

    • Synchronized text transcript [time stamped at 1 minute intervals, per OHMS tool]

    • table of contents/index with synchronized time codes [completed with use of OHMS tool]

    • Stitched-together one-single audio file, derivative or “sub-master” [requirement for OHMS tool]

      • may be pre-req for ohms func; could be done independently as well

In Process

  • Footnotes

  • XML time codes for dead air in combined derivative audio (also useful for untranscribed audio, where transcript has been edited)

Possible future features/projects

  • Segment-level metadata (especially keywords) searchable per 4/27/20 Tech Check-In

  • Get rid of dead air by editing audio or transcripts per 4/27/20 Tech Check-In

 

  • Additional OHMS Custom Viewer Functionality

    • Switching between table of contents and transcript synced to audio when audio is playing

    • Segment-level hyperlinks working

 

  • Custom audio player widget to provide:

    • 15-sec Rewind/FF buttons

    • Ability to type in a time and jump to it in player (new thought, LSB, 4/29)

    • Some options (all/most will do video as well as audio; since we have potential future video plans it might be convenient to pick one we can use for video too):

      • mediaelement.js (avalon uses?)

      • jw player?

      • research what OHMS standard player is using – might be one of the above?

 

  • Downloadable OHMS content

    • Text-only OHMS transcript (may offer accessibility improvements over the PDF transcript)

    • TOC content (segment title, description, keywords)?

 

  • Include full-text searchability in Digital Collections site, not just metadata--MICROSITE FEATURE

    • requires text-only transcript of some kind to be ingested, and additional software features.

    • Do we need to show the “match” from the full-text in-context (can be somewhat harder to implement)

    • Will need to be careful with relevance tuning, with a search corpus including both full-text and non-full-text content.

    • Relatively little use of Digital Collections is from internal search though, a lot of it comes via google.

      • Can we get google to know about complete transcripts, would that help?

    • Incorporate/weigh keywords and/or synopsis in search

 

  • Additional metadata in Dig Collections, more/all of what’s in microsite--MICROSITE FEATURE

    • Includes biographical, sponsorship

    • Searchable? Facets?

 

  • Include some embargoed/not fully public content in Digital Collections--MICROSITE FEATURE

    • Involves digital collections policy decision – previously we have not had any metadata-only records in digital collections. May affect how overall Digital Collections usability or perception by users including those that didn’t come for OH specifically. Do we need to consult other stakeholders/decision-makers?

    • Or should we consider having embargoed content in Digital Collections but not available in the “general” search, only available from an OH-specific search in Digital Collections?

    • Do we ingest the full content but leave it non-public (until embargo ends), or only ingest aspects of record that can be public now, ingest other components later when embargo ends?

    • this includes OH categories “restricted”, “semi-restricted”, and “free, with restrictions”. Also includes some OH “free access” content – to OH, “free access” sometimes means you can get it auto-delivered after filling out a form (no human approval required), but it can’t be on the web without being protected by a form.

    • If hosting this content, we could integrate the ‘request form', either link to existing microsite form, or re-implement func.

 

  • Search results in Digital Collections should let you know if hit has audio, transcript, (in the case of embargoed material, there may be a “supplemental” PDF, comprising front matter and index only)

 

  • Attend to UI on both microsite and dig collections so they work well together and people know to go from one to the other and can easily do so when needed--transitional functionality on the way to microsite replacement

    • Avoid “blind links”, tell people what they’re going to get when they click. Like if they’re going to get audio, or a transcript they can download without having to make a request/pay a fee, etc.

 

  • Separate Oral Histories-only search page, with more features like limit to records including audio, etc.

 

  • Add labels to audio file downloads to match how they are referred to in transcript

    • Does this become unnecessary if we do OHMS-like functionality?

    • Involves metadata entry, as well as minor software development

    • NOTE: Current prep work of transcripts for upload into OHMS includes changing audio file indicators to match DigColl filename list; this doesn’t help anyone who is trying to match up audio content with the published PDF transcript, though.

 

  • Preservation-related

    • Get more of the work/workflow files into Digital Collections, to take advantage of current and future preservation functionality

 

  • Automatically transfer metadata from micro-site to Digital Collections, to save data entry time

    • If we expand the Dig Collections metadata to include more of what’s in microsite, may increase in value

    • Much current Dig Collections metadata for OH is being copied from catalog, and is not in microsite (re-investigate auto copy data from catalog feature too?)

 

  • Ingest more supporting media and document(ation)

    • OH may already have portraits for many (on microsite? things in addition to portraits?)

 

  • Video media – support video assets in dig coll, specifically for OH’s that have video or are video-based (some ASL)--very important for SciDis project