Methods
Audio Sources, Oral History & Digital Publishing
This digital humanities lab explores the creation, preservation, and manipulation of audio primary sources for historical research through the example of the “Protest Voices” collection housed on Cleveland Voices https://clevelandvoices.org/collections/show/53.
Learning Outcomes
Each student will learn
- to locate audio primary sources, such as oral history interviews.
- to clip the audio into useful files to include in a digital publication such as the Digital Humanities Case Study
- to embed audio files in an online platform, in this case Pressbooks (WordPress)
Collection Background & Oral History Overview
The “Protest Voices” collection was created with support from Cleveland State University’s Undergraduate Summer Research Award program. This collection includes interviews conducted with Cleveland-based activists by Naomi A. Randt. At the time, Randt was an undergraduate student researcher.
The interviews are good examples of the evolution of creating and archiving oral histories.
- The oral histories were recorded and filed with the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities (https://csudigitalhumanities.org/)
- The CPHDH maintains an archive of each interview in the Cleveland Regional Oral History collection (https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc/)
- This collection includes the metadata (information about each interview), the audio file in mp3 format, and often an csv (comma separated values) file that is a log of the interview created by the interviewer. See this example of Randt’s interview with Bishop Anthony Pilla https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/786/
- can you locate all 3 elements described above?
One challenge for oral history repositories (or archival collections) is findability. Researchers often need to know where to look to locate specific interviews. The CPHDH has addressed this issue with two projects:
- Cleveland Voices (https://clevelandvoices.org/): an easy to navigate website that includes all the oral history interviews from the Cleveland Regional Oral History collection. Here the team is also starting to include transcripts (word for word text files of the interview audio) for users. This practice enables researchers and search engines to use the full text to locate research terms instead of just the terms included in the metadata. For instance, see the entry on Pilla on this site https://clevelandvoices.org/items/show/1786
- History Speaks (https://historyspeaks.clevelandhistory.org/): This project is a partnership between CPHDH and the Social Studies program at Cleveland State University. History Speaks also addresses the issue of findability and specifically clips oral history interviews into 2 minutes or less audio files for PreK-we educators to use in their classrooms. Many of the Protest Voices interviews were clipped and aligned with Ohio State Department of Education Content in this project.
Working with Audio Files
This activity will walk you through locating and clipping as audio file
- Create a new chapter in your project part on Pressbooks. Label it with your last name and oral history for now. Uncheck the box “Show in Web”
- Locate an oral history interview that you would like to work with. If you don’t have a source specific to your project, choose one from Protest Voices.
- Explore the interview metadata.
- Put the Chicago Style Citation of your interview for this lab in your chapter with a link to the interview if possible.
- In your chapter create a “Heading 2” called Sourcing. Under this header describe the sourcing of the interview.
- Who is being interviewed?
- Who is in the interviewer?
- When is the interview created? Why?
- Who is the audience?
- Where is the interview archived?
- Next create a “Header 2” for Audio Clip
- Listen to the interview, choosing a section to clip as an exemplary quote that could be used in a digital publication or class. See this tutorial https://socialstudies.clevelandhistory.org/audacity-tutorial-creating-a-story-clip/
- Use Audacity or an audio editor of your choice to clip the interview.
- Embed the audio clip in your Pressbooks chapter.
- go to “Add Media” above. Upload the clip. Follow the menu instructions to insert media.
- Note: you could also embed an entire interview this way, but think about how that impacts the audience experience of your project and analysis.
- Return to you chapter. Click Save and then preview your work.
- Create a “Header 2” for Summary
- how will you use audio clips in your digital humanities project? what do they add or are they inappropriate? Explain.
