oral history – Online Portfolio

May 15, 2018 (Final Self-Reflection)

The best way to learn more about Digital Humanities is working with people who have the knowledge and expertise in the field. After learning from the best professors selected by the GMU program, I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Pamela (Pam) Henson, Historian for Smithsonian Institution Archives, and her research assistant, Lisa. During my internship with the Smithsonian for two semesters, I have gained new skills to help me complete my digital public humanities site and to teach my undergraduate students about digital humanities as an introductory course. For this Spring semester, I used what I have learned in my graduate courses as well as from my own teaching experience to design an oral history collection. Pam selected Lucile Quarry Mann to be the first from the many collections (150 and counting) for my internship project.

Before I worked with Pam, I had minimal knowledge about oral history. After reading and researching more about oral history, I realized how it is a crucial component of digital humanities and the preservation of living history. Listening to the recorded interviews, which were originally recorded with tape recorders in the 1970s, has helped me to appreciate the unique discourse of oral history interviews between an interviewer and interviewee. The concept of digitizing audio recordings of interviews is fascinating because it allows the current audience to have access to living history in different formats. I also learned the importance of keeping track of everything such as documenting each interview with detailed information by viewing the transcripts and notes that were documented by Pam.

Designing a digital platform for an oral history collection comes with several challenges. One of the challenges was to present the material in a way that would engage a broad audience. In the designing stages of the digital platform, I used the skills that I have learned from the DH courses and my teaching experience. I have been teaching online since 2007, and one of my courses introduces students to think and analyze visual content from a rhetorical perspective for a writing course. Another challenge was selecting a segment of a full interview to introduce to the audience. The interview segment had to be short (5 minutes or less). There were a couple of interesting segments that lasted 10 minutes, but they were too long. The next challenge was to select images from the archives to correspond with the interview. In addition to posting images and text with the interview segment (e.g. image carousel), I came up with an idea of creating videos that combined the audio recording of the selected interview segment with images. I enjoyed the creative process of making a video because I was able to improve my video making skills while incorporating some of the techniques and skills that I have learned from my DH courses. The other challenge was making sure that there was enough memory or space for posting images and videos on the selected web page. These challenges provided a pathway for designing a digital platform for an oral history collection.

Working with Pam and Lisa has helped me to re-envision my design for Lucile Q. Mann’s oral history collection. From our weekly teleconferences and feedbacks, we collaborated to make the oral history and video history collections website possible for future launching. The progress is steady. Their helpful feedbacks were encouraging. I also provided feedback for the introductory pages of the oral history and video history collections website. Pam created a template that was modeled after my web page designs for Lucile Q. Mann’s oral history collection for future interns who will be working to put together oral history collections for the Smithsonian Institution. I am very excited that my work helped with designing the template for future oral history collections. I am very proud to be part of their project. I enjoyed working with a supportive and intelligent group, and I look forward to viewing the oral history collection on the Smithsonian Institution website when it is completed.

This semester’s internship has given me a new perspective on how oral history plays a significant role as a component of Digital Humanities. Presenting information from the past to an audience of the present and future is less challenging when certain digital tools, theories, and skills are used. How do we keep the changing audience interested in the people of the past? What digital tools are useful for creating and designing a new digital platform to present the past? How do we try to preserve the past without losing sight of our focus? Even though the past will remain constant in a form of a recorded interview in the case of Lucile Quarry Mann’s oral history collection, it is up to the digital humanities scholar/specialist to work with others to keep it visible and interesting in the present and for the future. It is also up to a collaborative group of people with various skill sets to help preserve the past and curate it as part of living history. Therefore, I plan to continue networking with people to encourage collaboration for my own digital public humanities project on Korean American history and culture while working on honing my oral history interviewing skills for future interviews.

April 13, 2018

Since my March post, I have been working on designing and creating an oral history page for Lucile Quarry Mann. After listening to more than 30 hours of audio recorded interviews and reviewing the transcripts, I selected at least 4 interesting segments from the interviews as featured items. I enjoyed the selection process because I became more familiar with Lucile Mann’s life. Her life with Dr. William Mann was exciting and adventurous. Also, I enjoyed listening to Pam Henson’s interviewing techniques because they will help me to develop a better understanding of oral history and approaching it from a different perspective. Pam’s discourse with Lucile Mann revealed exciting stories about the couple and how they contributed to the Smithsonian history and culture.

The process of linking the images to the selected interview segments was very challenging. First, I had to research the Smithsonian Archives for images to match the interview segments. Second, I had to splice the exact point an interview segment begins and ends. Third, I had difficulty narrowing down my selections. I tried my best to stay within the 5 minutes or less for the interview selections. Fourth, I was unable to find specific images for one of the interview segments that I thought would be a great featured item to entice the audience to listen to the full interviews. Even though the interviews were audio recordings, I was determined to make a video that synchronizes the audio recording segment with the images that were from the Mann family collections (e.g. photo albums, field books, and journals). During this process, I constantly thought about my audience. I created and designed for two different personas who would be most interested in listening to the oral history interviews, especially Lucy Mann’s interviews. Here is a link to the video in YouTube: https://youtu.be/lhpLiLftZpc

In one of our weekly meetings, I informed Pam and Lisa that I was unable to find most of the images for one of the segmented interviews. Pam sent excellent files for me to search for more images. These files allowed me to explore another segment that might be interesting to the audience. Pam designed the Oral History Intro Page. Lisa designed the Oral Histories summaries page. I designed Lucile Quarry Mann’s page for the Oral History Collection. However, when we had our meeting, we provided feedback for each other’s design because it was a collaborative effort. I designed Lucile Mann’s page in a landscape layout, so that it would closely resemble an actual web page. I tried to stay within the current guidelines of the Smithsonian’s Natural History website. I used my skills from my GMU course in designing a digital platform for a public humanities and history website. For L. Mann’s page, I tried to keep it less crowded and spaced out with a main image of Lucile Mann, a short bio section, an image carousel, segment clips with transcript, and a video that combines the audio recording of interview with images in synchronization. I had to post it in YouTube because the video was too large to send via email. I also added closed caption and transcript. I included a link to access the full interviews with a short description to tap into the curiosity of the audience to find out more about Lucy’s adventurous life. For the description, I kept the language simple and engaging. I learned this technique in my GMU coursework in Digital Humanities. Also, I added a Finding Aid link and links for additional resources that reference Lucile Q. Mann within the Smithsonian Archives and website.

My project was challenging, but I enjoyed it. It made me think about ways to redesign my own public humanities website. It also encouraged me to work with people from different professions and listen to good feedback. Collaboration, Communication, and Creativity are key elements in presenting a living history on a digital platform. This project has given me a chance to work on honing my video making and audio synchronization skills. Therefore, I look forward to seeing the finished product.

March 9, 2018

For the past few weeks, I have been working with Pam and her assistant Lisa to redesign and re-envision the Smithsonian’s oral history website. After reviewing, evaluating, and discussing 8 different oral history websites, each of us came up with ideas for a website redesign plan. I used the skills that were learned during my GMU Digital Humanities coursework. I also incorporated skills from designing my own websites. I imagined at least 2 different personas to approach my design from an audience’s perspective. Then, I typed a document that explains each part of the redesigned website. After I wrote my draft, I sketched what the redesigned website would look like. I learned this skill in Dr. Leon’s class when I was designing my public history website. I drew 4 different web pages of the website with a pencil (traced it over with a dark blue ink pen) on white sheets of 8 x11 paper: main page, about page, oral history interview pages A and B. I included a menu with clearly labeled buttons that will allow the user to learn about the site, navigate the oral history collections, listen and/view the oral history interviews, and read about interview’s background. It also included copyright information, a finding aid, map, timeline, and a contribution page for future crowdsourcing. Then, I scanned the completed sketches and saved them into a .pdf file. At the time I was redesigning the website, I was unaware that they had a current website. I was referencing the old website from 2004. I was informed about the current website when Pam, Lisa, and I re-convened to discuss our redesign plans. Fortunately, it all worked out. I suggested adding a timeline and map. The importance of having a timeline and/or map was something I learned in Dr. Kelly’s class. It helps the audience visualize the locations and time period when connecting them to the historical content. Also, I suggested placing a short video 1-2 minutes on the main page to introduce one of their featured collections to draw in the audience and engage them to explore their site and oral history collections. The other option was to include 1 or 2 paragraphs about the featured collection with selected images.

The next part of my internship is to create a way to sort and bring one of the collections together. Pam has suggested focusing on women at the Smithsonian, so we agreed it was good start. I received several audio interview recordings, transcripts, blog links about Lucile (Lucy) Quarry Mann. I am in the process of listening to the interviews while viewing the transcripts. Each interview is 30 minutes or more. During this time, I have created a short video (59 seconds) to get an idea of what a short video would look like to draw the audience to Lucy Mann’s oral history interviews. I used iMovie to created my video. Since the video was too large to send via email to Pam and Lisa, I had to post it on my YouTube Channel. Here is a link to my humble and short video: https://youtu.be/caC-9EFBcGM

February 9, 2018

I enjoyed the selected readings that were recommended by my Smithsonian mentor, Pam Henson. She encouraged me to read Oral History and Digital Humanities edited by Douglas A. Boyd and Mary A. Larson before I start my internship work. The essays in the book helped me to see a different perspective of Digital Humanities, and it gave me enough background information of how oral history became integrated into the digital world. Also, oral history is a component of Digital Humanities, and it has some interesting roots. Each of the authors described their challenges and recommendations of presenting oral history on a digital platform. The methods described in the book were insightful and informative. With advancing technology, they had to constantly tweak a few things to present oral history interviews online. The concept of the audience from each author reminded me of my GMU Digital Humanities course lesson on audience or user. I thought about the type of persona they had to imagine when making adjustments to their work. In addition to budget concerns and having enough manpower, collaboration was a key factor. This book provided good resources, past and present, that revealed the changes and importance of keeping the content significant with advancing technology. I reviewed some of the older oral history websites and noticed how they much they have changed due to change in technology, budget, manpower, collaboration, and audience. Therefore, these changes are no different from creating and maintaining a digital public humanities site.

Also, Pam introduced me to 8 different Oral History websites for evaluation. Pam, Lisa (Pam’s research assistant), and I are in the process of evaluating them in order to design Smithsonian’s Oral History Archive online. So far, I have reviewed 3 oral history websites. Carefully evaluating each site helped me to come up with ideas to improve my own public humanities website. There are themes and trends that seem to be outdated on a few sites, but the content is very useful if certain things were changed. Even though I am evaluating each site from my own perspective, I am constantly reminded in the back of my mind that the user is also looking for something else. During my coursework, I learned about the importance of designing a digital platform with several personae in mind. The digital tools and presentation of the oral history interviews are very important. The description or metadata comes back to haunt me in a good way. Learning about Dublin Core at the beginning of the GMU DH program helped me to look for the basic elements for each interview. Also, I am learning to see differences on how transcripts are displayed on each site.

The work that I have completed for the past few weeks have encouraged me to use my learned knowledge during my GMU coursework and experience with designing my own digital public humanities and teaching history and literature sites. I am excited about working with Pam and Lisa. Pam has been very helpful, and I appreciate the knowledge she has shared with me. I look forward to working on their oral history archive site.

Project Progress Update

For this week, I am facing a few challenges with language conversion, oral history content in OHMS, and a possibility of changing the title of my Omeka site. After I added a plugin for the Korean and English language display, I noticed a few issues. After contacting Reclaim about finding a way to display Korean and English in Omeka, I was directed to contact Omeka support. I hope I will finally get my answer. I created another WordPress site in case I could not find a solution for Omeka. In WordPress, I was able to find some great plugins for language conversion and display. However, I decided to continue with my project in Omeka and worry about the language conversion later. I changed the language back to English only.

I have been struggling a little bit with OHMS. I viewed the video tutorials and read the tutorial guides; however, I just didn’t understand the procedure. I was able to add my interview with Dr. Zo, a first-generation Korean American, to OHMS. However, the audio recording does not appear in the Preview. Now, I have to figure out the problem, so I can link it to my Omeka site. The audio recording is currently available on my Omeka site. After removing my first interview, I decided to upload an interview from Youtube. It is an interview with a famous musician, Allen Toussaint, courtesy of the Library of Congress. Here is the updated link to my OHMS annotation activity: https://ohms.uky.edu/preview/?id=35461. Unfortunately, the video is not available for Preview even though I added the URL in the Metadata.

After interviewing two influential Korean Americans, I am contemplating if I should change the title from Koreatowns in North Texas to North Texas Korean Americans. The interviewees provided wonderful and inspirational narratives about their journey to America (Texas) and how they have contributed to their Korean American community. Each interviewee expressed his or her own passion for community involvement. They did mention Koreatown Dallas, but I am gradually realizing that I need to let go or release my control of the project’s initial direction and see it from an inclusive and audience centered objective.

My next steps include oral history management, addition of social media plugins, additional video recordings, and testing the site with volunteers. I will be uploading and transcribing the remaining audio recordings of the 2 interviews. Before I add the plugins for social media, I need to create a Facebook account for the project site and a Youtube Channel. For Facebook, I can add an image from the Omeka site with a brief description and a title to invite audience participation. For the Youtube Channel, I plan to record a short video about one of the places in Koreatown Dallas or Carrollton to capture the audience’s attention. I might record a short food video from a Korean restaurant (if permitted by restaurant manager/owner) or a panoramic video of Koreatown Dallas or Carrollton and upload it to Youtube. Even though my project is in the early stages of a digital public history site, I will be asking for a few volunteers from different backgrounds and ages to view my site and provide a brief feedback. I might even ask my own students to take a look at the site as a classroom exercise on the rhetorical persuasion and audience engagement of a digital public history site that is a work in progress.

A Reflection on Oral History in DPH Projects

Digital technologies have provided different ways of including and delivering oral history in a digital space. There are systems or software programs that are available to help project designers to include oral history in a digital space. For example, “The Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), a web-based system, provides users with word-level search capability and a time- correlated transcript or index, connecting the textual search term to the corresponding moment in the recorded interview online” (Boyd 95). On the other hand, there are some challenges that complicate the practice of oral history. According to Boyd, “… it still remains underutilized because oral history can be a cumbersome resource to use, even in an online environment” (95). Initially, OHMS was developed for transcribed oral history; and it became a challenge in the digital space. Also, “Software designed to offer access to archived materials is not sensitive to specific challenges posed by oral histories” (Boyd 96).

The American Folklife Center uses Oracle APEX for their platform. Groce and Lyons “expect the online platform developed for the Occupational Folklore Project to result in cost-efficient protocols for the acquisition of oral history materials from partners in geographically dispersed locations…to minimize the work of translating and mediating data that accompanies these acquisitions” (65). It allows the user to include content with less complications.

Another challenge is the cost of transcribing and auditing oral history. “The digital index has the advantage of being a true timecode; however, very few digital archival systems have been developed to automate the linking of the timecode representing the segment created to the corresponding moment in the interview” (Boyd 101). As a result, “Indexing in OHMS allows us to create a workflow that puts these interviews online much more quickly and efficiently at a very low cost” (Boyd 103). It is not cheap. So, OHMS developed a better option. Currently, OHMS is free. Also, OHMS is compatible with certain programs. For example, “As part of this initiative, OHMS is being developed as a plug-in, working seamlessly with other content management systems, including Omeka, Kora, CONTENTdm, and Drupal” (Boyd 96). There are helpful video tutorials (and transcripts) on how to use OHMS for annotating oral history.

Furthermore, there is a challenge of having too many topics. The Occupational Folkore Project, designed by the American Folklife Center, came up with a great solution. “To address this challenge, we again worked with our archiving and cataloging colleagues to develop a controlled vocabulary, a list of preselected words and terms designed to limit ambiguity and aid the search and retrieval of information” (Groce and Lyons 62). This solution created an efficient way to catalog the topics prior to the oral history interviews.

To ensure that the project site maintains its user centered focus, testing the site at various times is very helpful. Including oral history in a digital space presents another complication that can be good for the project designers. American Folklife Center uses Beta-testing, which they rely on volunteers from libraries, schools, organizers, etc. This allows the AFC to “use testers’ feedback to refine our [their] procedures and improve our protocols” (Groce and Lyons 65). Referring to Angela Colter’s “Testing Content,” “Whatever your budget, timeline, and access to users, there’s a method to test whether your content is appropriate for the people reading it.” Therefore, testing the site is a win-win situation for both the project designers and users.

The articles and project sites for Oral History (Module 7) have strongly influenced my proposed decision to add an oral history component to my project. Here is the link for my OHMS annotation assignment: https://ohms.uky.edu/preview/?id=35461. I plan to add interviews to complement the Exhibit items in Omeka. Also, the oral history component would be a great add-on for including and engaging the audience. I might consider adding an option for the audience to add their oral history of Koreatowns in North Texas by selecting one of the two options: text or recording (voice/video). They can upload a document or type their history in the space provided (with word limit), or they can upload a short video. The transcription of the oral history will be beneficial for me and the audience. I like the idea of the segmented transcription of oral history in OHMS. If either text or video includes Korean language, I will have to find a way to translate it in either format. Adding the oral history, in the form of text, voice, or video recording, reflects a humanistic approach to my digital public history project. The audience will be introduced to real people and their stories in order to make human connections in a digital space. The connections result in engaging and interesting communication that will help me improve my project.

Project Progress Update

The challenges I am facing for this week are drafting a set of interview or oral history questions, deciding on voice recording or video recording of my interviewees, and redesigning some of the Exhibit pages in my project site. After making the effort to contact influential Korean Americans in North Texas, I have received positive responses. I am in the process of scheduling a time and place to meet two people (first generation Korean Americans) who will contribute to my project. The interviewees speak Korean and English fluently, so the transcripts of the interviews will be a challenge if both languages are used. Another challenge is that I am still trying to figure out how to include Korean language for some of the description of the Exhibit items. Since my Korean is not the best, I might ask someone to proofread and edit my Korean. Also, I have to go back to the drawing board or storyboard and redesign a page or pages for the Exhibits in Omeka because I might add a voice recording or video recording to complement some of the Exhibit items. I will explore plugins for uploading the recordings in Omeka; however, I am currently learning how to annotate oral history by using the OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer). I am also learning about the different digital files and conversions for the interview recordings. The readings and site explorations for Module 7 have inspired me to look at my project from a different point of view and to revisit the concept of user centered exhibit when oral history becomes part of the project site.