Including Transcripts With Oral History Podcasts

I think it is important to include transcripts with oral history podcasts.  Transcripts help everybody:

• Listeners
• Researchers
• Deaf users

At the Oral History Association’s annual meeting in Little Rock (see previous post), Rebecca Wright emphasized this point in the “Introduction to Oral History” workshop.  She said words to the effect:

“Given a choice between audio and a transcript, researchers will choose a transcript.  Given a choice between audio and nothing, researchers will choose nothing.”

Researchers need to scan quickly to determine if an interview has relevant information and quotes.

To make scanning easy, there are two techniques:

1. Index - which contains a timestamp and a brief description of what is being talked about.  This helps all listeners find the audio clip they are most interested in. 

2. Transcript – which contains a word-by-word copy of what is being said.  This is very useful for researchers.

So far in my project, I’ve been doing a hybrid of these two techniques.  I started by listening to the raw audio (anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours - broken down into more than one audio file.)  As I listened in Windows Media Player which displays a running timestamp, I created an index. 

Then, as I decided which parts of the interview to include in a 12 to 15 minute podcast, I found myself going back and transcribing some of the detailed conversation to make editing easier.  This was helpful because I sometimes selected audio out of sequence and needed exact words and phrases to make it sound plausible.  (For example, I frequently asked the person to expand on something they said earlier). 

I intend to upload either the index or my hybrid document with all of my podcasts.