Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-10 Thread Mark Canney
If you're not already aware of it, you ought to take a look at Stories 
Matter 
(http://storytelling.concordia.ca/storiesmatter/announcing-stories-matter-v-1-6e/about-stories-matter), 
an open source oral history database tool developed at Concordia 
University in Canada. SM allows archiving of digital video and audio 
materials, enabling oral historians to annotate, analyze, etc.



On 10/3/2012 6:22 AM, Gary McGath wrote:

On 10/2/12 8:44 AM, Paul Orkiszewski wrote:

Hi 4libers,

Does anyone know of something - a kiosk, an iPad app, a web application
- that:

I don't know of anything like it out there, but let's look at what it
might take. I've done some software work in connection with Harvard's
Iranian Oral History Project.


- Initiates an oral history interview by getting demographic info and
permission to use and stream for scholarly purposes.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. It sounds as if you're talking
about automated correspondence with the sources. That would be a huge
project in itself, so I assume you've got something more narrowly
focused in mind.


- Goes through a standard set of questions (in our case stuff about the
Appalachian State experience)

There are two pieces to this: Recording the responses and storing the
relevant metadata. The recording probably shouldn't be tied to a
specific device or application, since field work can involve a lot of
different conditions. The researcher in the field would want something
to enter the metadata (who, what, when, where); this would be a
straightforward piece.


- Stores the metadata, permissions release, and pointers to the audio
files created for each question in a dbase record

You don't say what the scope of the work is; from the way you're putting
the questions, I'm assuming it's a small-scale project with one
researcher doing the interviews and putting the information together.
Even so, It's probably best to have the field work be a separate
application from assembling the information in the database. If nothing
else, once you're at this point there's more standard software that can
be used.


- Processes the audio through speech recognition either in real time or
post-interview, and populates the dbase record with rendered text (at
whatever level of accuracy)

You could do this piece with Dragon; see this post for some discussion:

http://www.nuance.com/dragon/transcription-solutions/index.htm

A friend of mine is an expert in this area and might be able to answer
some questions.


- Provide a search interface, where the meatadata, demographic info
(within reasonable privacy limits), and the transcript (however garbled)
is searchable.

I'd suggest basing something on Apache Lucene.


- Crowd source the improvement of the transcriptions over time

This needs to be better specified. One solution is to put the text onto
a wiki. If you're talking about integrating it into the application that
does all the rest, it could get messy.


- Package the interface as an app, and set up a machine image on Amazon
EC2, such that when someone uses the image and points a browser to it,
it goes through a set up routine so that smaller schools and historical
societies can set up their own sites in the cloud.  I haven't tried
streaming on a free tier EC2 server, but you get 30 GB of storage, so
you could get a fair number of hours of audio (depending on the
settings) before you have to start paying.

This, I assume, is why you're talking about treating the whole thing as
a single application. Putting it all together would be a huge chunk of
work. Dragon's software isn't free, and I don't know of anything for
free that does decent speech transcription, so that would be a stumbling
block to making it available to other institutions.

?

Anyone interested in trying it with me if there's nothing already out
there?  I'm leaning toward iPad, so we'd need iOS, server admin, dbase,
and media expertise.  I have newbie-but-getting-better skill in the last
3.  Zero skill in iOS.

I'm available for freelance work and it sounds very interesting, but
you've just outlined a huge project that would be a significant burden
even for the LoC's resources. That's not to say it can't be useful as a
blue-sky starting point for something more reasonable. If you have
funding, let's talk off-list. If you just want to continue blue-skying
the idea for a while, I'm glad to continue on-list (and I promise not to
bill you for that :).




--
Mark Canney
Manager, Lending Services
Lehigh University Libraries
8A E. Packer Avenue
Bethlehem, PA   18015-3170
610-758-3028
mark.can...@lehigh.edu


Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-10 Thread Gary McGath
On 10/10/12 11:42 AM, Gary McGath wrote:
 On 10/10/12 9:19 AM, Mark Canney wrote:
 If you're not already aware of it, you ought to take a look at Stories
 Matter
 (http://storytelling.concordia.ca/storiesmatter/announcing-stories-matter-v-1-6e/about-stories-matter),
 an open source oral history database tool developed at Concordia
 University in Canada. SM allows archiving of digital video and audio
 materials, enabling oral historians to annotate, analyze, etc.
 
 
 I just downloaded the Mac version to give it a try. The first thing
 you're supposed to do is click the New Project button at the bottom of
 the project list. There's an empty project list, but no New Project
 button or any other way of creating a project. Very odd.
 
 The application is Flash-based, and I have a hate-hate relationship with
 Flash, so it may have something to do with that. :)
 

Finally got the thing working, though I don't know what I did
differently other than restart the application. This app doesn't offer
the tight integration or voice transcription sought in the original
proposal, but it could provide the core of a more modest solution made
out of diverse components.


-- 
Gary McGath, Professional Software Developer   http://www.garymcgath.com


Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-03 Thread Gary McGath
On 10/2/12 8:44 AM, Paul Orkiszewski wrote:
 Hi 4libers,
 
 Does anyone know of something - a kiosk, an iPad app, a web application
 - that:

I don't know of anything like it out there, but let's look at what it
might take. I've done some software work in connection with Harvard's
Iranian Oral History Project.

 - Initiates an oral history interview by getting demographic info and
 permission to use and stream for scholarly purposes.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. It sounds as if you're talking
about automated correspondence with the sources. That would be a huge
project in itself, so I assume you've got something more narrowly
focused in mind.

 - Goes through a standard set of questions (in our case stuff about the
 Appalachian State experience)

There are two pieces to this: Recording the responses and storing the
relevant metadata. The recording probably shouldn't be tied to a
specific device or application, since field work can involve a lot of
different conditions. The researcher in the field would want something
to enter the metadata (who, what, when, where); this would be a
straightforward piece.

 - Stores the metadata, permissions release, and pointers to the audio
 files created for each question in a dbase record

You don't say what the scope of the work is; from the way you're putting
the questions, I'm assuming it's a small-scale project with one
researcher doing the interviews and putting the information together.
Even so, It's probably best to have the field work be a separate
application from assembling the information in the database. If nothing
else, once you're at this point there's more standard software that can
be used.

 - Processes the audio through speech recognition either in real time or
 post-interview, and populates the dbase record with rendered text (at
 whatever level of accuracy)

You could do this piece with Dragon; see this post for some discussion:

http://www.nuance.com/dragon/transcription-solutions/index.htm

A friend of mine is an expert in this area and might be able to answer
some questions.

 - Provide a search interface, where the meatadata, demographic info
 (within reasonable privacy limits), and the transcript (however garbled)
 is searchable.

I'd suggest basing something on Apache Lucene.

 - Crowd source the improvement of the transcriptions over time

This needs to be better specified. One solution is to put the text onto
a wiki. If you're talking about integrating it into the application that
does all the rest, it could get messy.

 - Package the interface as an app, and set up a machine image on Amazon
 EC2, such that when someone uses the image and points a browser to it,
 it goes through a set up routine so that smaller schools and historical
 societies can set up their own sites in the cloud.  I haven't tried
 streaming on a free tier EC2 server, but you get 30 GB of storage, so
 you could get a fair number of hours of audio (depending on the
 settings) before you have to start paying.

This, I assume, is why you're talking about treating the whole thing as
a single application. Putting it all together would be a huge chunk of
work. Dragon's software isn't free, and I don't know of anything for
free that does decent speech transcription, so that would be a stumbling
block to making it available to other institutions.
 
 ?
 
 Anyone interested in trying it with me if there's nothing already out
 there?  I'm leaning toward iPad, so we'd need iOS, server admin, dbase,
 and media expertise.  I have newbie-but-getting-better skill in the last
 3.  Zero skill in iOS.

I'm available for freelance work and it sounds very interesting, but
you've just outlined a huge project that would be a significant burden
even for the LoC's resources. That's not to say it can't be useful as a
blue-sky starting point for something more reasonable. If you have
funding, let's talk off-list. If you just want to continue blue-skying
the idea for a while, I'm glad to continue on-list (and I promise not to
bill you for that :).


-- 
Gary McGath, Professional Software Developerdevelo...@mcgath.com


Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-03 Thread Paul Orkiszewski

Hi Robin,

Thanks so much for your comments.

I was thinking of a completely automated process.  I'm thinking of it as 
oral history because, at least in the initial use of the program, we'd 
use a set list of questions for all respondents.  I realise it probably 
won't be as good/useful as the product of a trained interviewer, and the 
system could accommodate machine and human mediation.  That could be a 
part of the metadata so you could analyze how people respond to human vs 
computer questioning.  Another possibility would be to use one set of 
questions for the computer interview, then invite participants to 
schedule a person-to-person interview.  Kind of like recruiting people 
into a cult.


I guess the main thing I'm trying to do is leverage technology to get 
oral histories available in an admittedly less-than-perfect form as 
quickly as possible so it can be improved via crowd sourcing.  The 
interview's the easy part, but there's often a lag until it becomes 
useable.  If people are committed and know what they're doing, the loop 
closes with a searchable archive of transcribed interviews.  This is for 
people and organizations who are kind of committed and don't really know 
what they're doing.


Thanks again for your thoughts and the links!

Paul

On 10/2/12 3:39 PM, Robin Dean wrote:

Hi Paul,

Just to clarify what you mean by automated--are you looking for a process 
that completely removes the need for an interviewer, and only involves people recording 
their answers to a questionnaire alone with a machine?

The seems to be the model the Outhouse project was experimenting with. Even then, this 
article says that in one of the Outhouse initiatives, around half of the participants 
preferred to do face-to-face interviews rather than be recorded alone in a booth: 
http://camra.culturemap.org.au/central-darling/outhouse-research

I think it's a good idea to digitally capture more first-person stories, but I have 
trouble thinking of them as oral histories without a human interviewer.

If you're interested, here are a couple more projects that are looking at how 
to increase the number of digital oral histories that are captured, preserved, 
and usefully made accessible.

Colorado Voice Preserve (they are currently looking at the infrastructure 
needed for a statewide oral history initiative, including technical 
requirements): http://www.voicepreserve.org

IMLS Oral History in the Digital Age site:
http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/

Best,

Robin Dean
Director, Alliance Digital Repository
Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries
http://adrresources.coalliance.org/


--


*Paul Orkiszewski*
Coordinator of Library Technology Services / Associate Professor
University Library
Appalachian State University
218 College Street
P.O. Box 32026
Boone, NC 28608-2026

E-mail: orkiszews...@appstate.edu
Phone: 828 262 6588
Fax: 828 262 2797



Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-03 Thread Paul Orkiszewski

Very cool.  Audio should be easier than video.  Thanks Jason! -- Paul

On 10/3/12 2:00 PM, Jason Ronallo wrote:

Paul,

You may want to look at WebRTC: http://www.webrtc.org/

Especially getUserMedia which allows for video capture within the
browser from a users webcam:
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/getusermedia/intro/

This is bleeding edge stuff and probably not ready for a real project,
but it may be that something like this enables the kind of project
you're wanting to do. Chrome seems to be out front with this last I
looked.

Jason

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Paul Orkiszewski
orkiszews...@appstate.edu  wrote:

Hi 4libers,

Does anyone know of something - a kiosk, an iPad app, a web application -
that:

- Initiates an oral history interview by getting demographic info and
permission to use and stream for scholarly purposes.


--


*Paul Orkiszewski*
Coordinator of Library Technology Services / Associate Professor
University Library
Appalachian State University
218 College Street
P.O. Box 32026
Boone, NC 28608-2026

E-mail: orkiszews...@appstate.edu
Phone: 828 262 6588
Fax: 828 262 2797



Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-03 Thread Robin Dean
Hi Paul,

Thanks for your response! I like the idea that this could be a standalone way 
to capture first-person accounts as well as a way to launch more 
in-depth/traditional oral history interviews.

Some of your requirements remind me of the National Library of Medicine's video 
player:

NLM Video Search accurately and quickly searches digital videos with embedded 
transcripts. In addition to offering a full-text search of a film’s transcript, 
the tool graphically displays where a search word or phrase occurs within the 
timeline of a film. ... NLM Video Search is based on a combination of 
open-source and inexpensive commercial multimedia tools enhanced with speech 
recognition technology.

More here:
http://www.hhs.gov/open/initiatives/hhsinnovates/round3/dustmonitor.html

Best,
Robin


Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-03 Thread Al Matthews
Hi all. Thanks Jason for the excellent links.

 Chrome seems to be out front with this last I looked.

After somehow spending an hour reading all this, it seems like audio doesn't 
work yet, right? Except on Chromium canary on Mac. Which is something.

Mozilla's also big into this as well http://mozillapopcorn.org/ 
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API . The latter remains Firefox-specific 
and Mozilla marks it as deprecated. Still, it exists.

Android has a speech API 
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/03/speech-input-api-for-android.html,
 and implements Media Capture it seems.

As a fine alternative, and more general, 
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/gstreamer seems like a sane postprocessed 
example.

Dear to me, that last. But doesn't one simplify all this by keeping recording 
off the cloud and building out the separate components?

Record ; send ; speech-to-text ; share and improve .

I do like this, Paul, the idea.

Al Matthews, Software Dev,
Atlanta University Center

From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jason Ronallo 
[jrona...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 2:00 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

Paul,

You may want to look at WebRTC: http://www.webrtc.org/

Especially getUserMedia which allows for video capture within the
browser from a users webcam:
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/getusermedia/intro/

This is bleeding edge stuff and probably not ready for a real project,
but it may be that something like this enables the kind of project
you're wanting to do. Chrome seems to be out front with this last I
looked.

Jason

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Paul Orkiszewski
orkiszews...@appstate.edu wrote:
 Hi 4libers,

 Does anyone know of something - a kiosk, an iPad app, a web application -
 that:

 - Initiates an oral history interview by getting demographic info and
 permission to use and stream for scholarly purposes.
-
**
The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential.
They are intended for the named recipient(s) only.
If you have received this email in error please notify the system
manager or  the 
sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to anyone or
make copies.

** IronMail scanned this email for viruses, vandals and malicious
content. **
**


Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-03 Thread Paul Orkiszewski
Record ; send ; speech-to-text ; share and improve -- that's pretty 
much the algorithm. Or musically -


Vamp til ready
||: fire aim ready :||

Paul

On 10/3/12 4:01 PM, Al Matthews wrote:

Hi all. Thanks Jason for the excellent links.


Chrome seems to be out front with this last I looked.

After somehow spending an hour reading all this, it seems like audio doesn't work yet, 
right? Except on Chromium canary on Mac. Which is something.

Mozilla's also big into this as well http://mozillapopcorn.org/ 
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API . The latter remains Firefox-specific 
and Mozilla marks it as deprecated. Still, it exists.

Android has a speech API 
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/03/speech-input-api-for-android.html,
 and implements Media Capture it seems.

As a fine alternative, and more general, 
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/gstreamer seems like a sane postprocessed 
example.

Dear to me, that last. But doesn't one simplify all this by keeping recording 
off the cloud and building out the separate components?

Record ; send ; speech-to-text ; share and improve .

I do like this, Paul, the idea.

Al Matthews, Software Dev,
Atlanta University Center

From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jason Ronallo 
[jrona...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 2:00 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

Paul,

You may want to look at WebRTC: http://www.webrtc.org/

Especially getUserMedia which allows for video capture within the
browser from a users webcam:
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/getusermedia/intro/

This is bleeding edge stuff and probably not ready for a real project,
but it may be that something like this enables the kind of project
you're wanting to do. Chrome seems to be out front with this last I
looked.

Jason

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Paul Orkiszewski
orkiszews...@appstate.edu  wrote:

Hi 4libers,

Does anyone know of something - a kiosk, an iPad app, a web application -
that:

- Initiates an oral history interview by getting demographic info and
permission to use and stream for scholarly purposes.

-
**
The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential.
They are intended for the named recipient(s) only.
If you have received this email in error please notify the system
manager or  the
sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to anyone or
make copies.

** IronMail scanned this email for viruses, vandals and malicious
content. **
**


--


*Paul Orkiszewski*
Coordinator of Library Technology Services / Associate Professor
University Library
Appalachian State University
218 College Street
P.O. Box 32026
Boone, NC 28608-2026

E-mail: orkiszews...@appstate.edu
Phone: 828 262 6588
Fax: 828 262 2797



Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-03 Thread Gary McGath
Continuing on this part: My friend says that using any existing speech
recognition software won't work at all well for transcribing interviews
with a variety of people. All such software needs to be trained to the
speaker's voice.

A possible alternative is for a designated person to train the software
and re-speak it into the speech recognition software.

On 10/3/12 6:22 AM, Gary McGath wrote:
 On 10/2/12 8:44 AM, Paul Orkiszewski wrote:

 - Processes the audio through speech recognition either in real time or
 post-interview, and populates the dbase record with rendered text (at
 whatever level of accuracy)
 
 You could do this piece with Dragon; see this post for some discussion:
 
 http://www.nuance.com/dragon/transcription-solutions/index.htm
 
 A friend of mine is an expert in this area and might be able to answer
 some questions.



-- 
Gary McGath, Professional Software Developer   http://www.garymcgath.com


Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-03 Thread Al Matthews
Yes. Or else it's a machine learning problem at far side, with speakers 
organized by, I dunno, geography.

Regardless, the models will need training.

Al Matthews,
AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library

404.978.2057 o
404.769.2617 c

- Reply message -
From: Gary McGath develo...@mcgath.com
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server
Date: Wed, Oct 3, 2012 5:06 pm



Continuing on this part: My friend says that using any existing speech
recognition software won't work at all well for transcribing interviews
with a variety of people. All such software needs to be trained to the
speaker's voice.

A possible alternative is for a designated person to train the software
and re-speak it into the speech recognition software.

On 10/3/12 6:22 AM, Gary McGath wrote:
 On 10/2/12 8:44 AM, Paul Orkiszewski wrote:

 - Processes the audio through speech recognition either in real time or
 post-interview, and populates the dbase record with rendered text (at
 whatever level of accuracy)

 You could do this piece with Dragon; see this post for some discussion:

 http://www.nuance.com/dragon/transcription-solutions/index.htm

 A friend of mine is an expert in this area and might be able to answer
 some questions.



--
Gary McGath, Professional Software Developer   http://www.garymcgath.com

-
**
The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential.
They are intended for the named recipient(s) only.
If you have received this email in error please notify the system
manager or  the 
sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to anyone or
make copies.

** IronMail scanned this email for viruses, vandals and malicious
content. **
**

[CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-02 Thread Paul Orkiszewski

Hi 4libers,

Does anyone know of something - a kiosk, an iPad app, a web application 
- that:


- Initiates an oral history interview by getting demographic info and 
permission to use and stream for scholarly purposes.
- Goes through a standard set of questions (in our case stuff about the 
Appalachian State experience)
- Stores the metadata, permissions release, and pointers to the audio 
files created for each question in a dbase record
- Processes the audio through speech recognition either in real time or 
post-interview, and populates the dbase record with rendered text (at 
whatever level of accuracy)
- Provide a search interface, where the meatadata, demographic info 
(within reasonable privacy limits), and the transcript (however garbled) 
is searchable.

- Crowd source the improvement of the transcriptions over time
- Package the interface as an app, and set up a machine image on Amazon 
EC2, such that when someone uses the image and points a browser to it, 
it goes through a set up routine so that smaller schools and historical 
societies can set up their own sites in the cloud.  I haven't tried 
streaming on a free tier EC2 server, but you get 30 GB of storage, so 
you could get a fair number of hours of audio (depending on the 
settings) before you have to start paying.


?

Anyone interested in trying it with me if there's nothing already out 
there?  I'm leaning toward iPad, so we'd need iOS, server admin, dbase, 
and media expertise.  I have newbie-but-getting-better skill in the last 
3.  Zero skill in iOS.


Paul
--


*Paul Orkiszewski*
Coordinator of Library Technology Services / Associate Professor
University Library
Appalachian State University
218 College Street
P.O. Box 32026
Boone, NC 28608-2026

E-mail: orkiszews...@appstate.edu
Phone: 828 262 6588
Fax: 828 262 2797



Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-02 Thread Johan Oomen
Did you look at http://storycorps.org/ ?


Best,
Johan
@johanoomen

2012/10/2 Paul Orkiszewski orkiszews...@appstate.edu

 Hi 4libers,

 Does anyone know of something - a kiosk, an iPad app, a web application -
 that:

 - Initiates an oral history interview by getting demographic info and
 permission to use and stream for scholarly purposes.
 - Goes through a standard set of questions (in our case stuff about the
 Appalachian State experience)
 - Stores the metadata, permissions release, and pointers to the audio
 files created for each question in a dbase record
 - Processes the audio through speech recognition either in real time or
 post-interview, and populates the dbase record with rendered text (at
 whatever level of accuracy)
 - Provide a search interface, where the meatadata, demographic info
 (within reasonable privacy limits), and the transcript (however garbled) is
 searchable.
 - Crowd source the improvement of the transcriptions over time
 - Package the interface as an app, and set up a machine image on Amazon
 EC2, such that when someone uses the image and points a browser to it, it
 goes through a set up routine so that smaller schools and historical
 societies can set up their own sites in the cloud.  I haven't tried
 streaming on a free tier EC2 server, but you get 30 GB of storage, so you
 could get a fair number of hours of audio (depending on the settings)
 before you have to start paying.

 ?

 Anyone interested in trying it with me if there's nothing already out
 there?  I'm leaning toward iPad, so we'd need iOS, server admin, dbase, and
 media expertise.  I have newbie-but-getting-better skill in the last 3.
  Zero skill in iOS.

 Paul
 --

 --**--**
 
 *Paul Orkiszewski*
 Coordinator of Library Technology Services / Associate Professor
 University Library
 Appalachian State University
 218 College Street
 P.O. Box 32026
 Boone, NC 28608-2026

 E-mail: orkiszews...@appstate.edu
 Phone: 828 262 6588
 Fax: 828 262 2797
 --**--**
 



Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-02 Thread Paul Orkiszewski
That's certainly part of my inspiration, as well as the Outhouse 
Storycatcher 
http://camra.culturemap.org.au/culturewatch/outhouse-features-nsw-indigenous-cultural-summit 
in Australia, and other sites throughout the US such as the University 
of Georgia http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell/exhibits/permanent.html 
but, as far as I can tell, I don't think they are automated processes.  
I think better oral history is done with a trained interviewer and 
professional transcription, but we could get more stuff up quickly that 
would be better than nothing (and better than losing history to death), 
which over time could turn into a very rich resource for studying 
particular communities. -- Paul



On 10/2/12 8:54 AM, Johan Oomen wrote:

Did you look at http://storycorps.org/ ?


Best,
Johan
@johanoomen

2012/10/2 Paul Orkiszewskiorkiszews...@appstate.edu


Hi 4libers,

Does anyone know of something - a kiosk, an iPad app, a web application -
that:

- Initiates an oral history interview by getting demographic info and
permission to use and stream for scholarly purposes.
- Goes through a standard set of questions (in our case stuff about the
Appalachian State experience)
- Stores the metadata, permissions release, and pointers to the audio
files created for each question in a dbase record
- Processes the audio through speech recognition either in real time or
post-interview, and populates the dbase record with rendered text (at
whatever level of accuracy)
- Provide a search interface, where the meatadata, demographic info
(within reasonable privacy limits), and the transcript (however garbled) is
searchable.
- Crowd source the improvement of the transcriptions over time
- Package the interface as an app, and set up a machine image on Amazon
EC2, such that when someone uses the image and points a browser to it, it
goes through a set up routine so that smaller schools and historical
societies can set up their own sites in the cloud.  I haven't tried
streaming on a free tier EC2 server, but you get 30 GB of storage, so you
could get a fair number of hours of audio (depending on the settings)
before you have to start paying.

?

Anyone interested in trying it with me if there's nothing already out
there?  I'm leaning toward iPad, so we'd need iOS, server admin, dbase, and
media expertise.  I have newbie-but-getting-better skill in the last 3.
  Zero skill in iOS.

Paul
--

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*Paul Orkiszewski*
Coordinator of Library Technology Services / Associate Professor
University Library
Appalachian State University
218 College Street
P.O. Box 32026
Boone, NC 28608-2026

E-mail: orkiszews...@appstate.edu
Phone: 828 262 6588
Fax: 828 262 2797
--**--**




--


*Paul Orkiszewski*
Coordinator of Library Technology Services / Associate Professor
University Library
Appalachian State University
218 College Street
P.O. Box 32026
Boone, NC 28608-2026

E-mail: orkiszews...@appstate.edu
Phone: 828 262 6588
Fax: 828 262 2797



Re: [CODE4LIB] Oral history app and server

2012-10-02 Thread Robin Dean
Hi Paul,

Just to clarify what you mean by automated--are you looking for a process 
that completely removes the need for an interviewer, and only involves people 
recording their answers to a questionnaire alone with a machine? 

The seems to be the model the Outhouse project was experimenting with. Even 
then, this article says that in one of the Outhouse initiatives, around half 
of the participants preferred to do face-to-face interviews rather than be 
recorded alone in a booth: 
http://camra.culturemap.org.au/central-darling/outhouse-research

I think it's a good idea to digitally capture more first-person stories, but I 
have trouble thinking of them as oral histories without a human interviewer.

If you're interested, here are a couple more projects that are looking at how 
to increase the number of digital oral histories that are captured, preserved, 
and usefully made accessible.

Colorado Voice Preserve (they are currently looking at the infrastructure 
needed for a statewide oral history initiative, including technical 
requirements): http://www.voicepreserve.org

IMLS Oral History in the Digital Age site:
http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/

Best,

Robin Dean
Director, Alliance Digital Repository
Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries
http://adrresources.coalliance.org/