Back in the Saddle and a Bit About Oral Histories

In school, coming back from Spring Break (or any vacation for that matter) can be difficult. There is still work to be done to finish the semester, loose ends to tie, and projects to complete. However, if you work in a group and that group is both organized and structured, picking up where you left off is fairly easy.

This week, Carson, Amanda, and I will begin filling in the pages on the website as I discussed last week. Additionally, we will each work on transcribing the Monroe Gilmour interview and attempt to upload a SoundCloud file of it. Of course, it will be challenging and tricky to fit the long time needed to transcribe a 45-minute conversation into our busy schedules. I’m currently in the process of transcribing two oral histories for a different class, and I have quickly learned it is much harder than it looks. Human conversation is not as “neat” as we wish – there are plenty of “ums,” “uhs,” and other types of unintelligible slag one must mine through in order to get the “gold.” Yet once someone finds that gold, the payoff is incredible rewarding.

Dr. Daniel Pierce interviewed many NASCAR drivers, including Richard Petty in 1998. I suggest following his format and conventions for those transcribing oral histories.

Luckily, we have such great resources in the Media Design Center, including a quasi-Dictaphone we can use to pause the interview while we transcribe it.

I do not know if Dr. Pearson has done too many oral histories (the historian’s term for these interviews.) I remember she mentioned one which proved somewhat incriminating to the participant, and so she agreed to stop it. Her scholarship and focus is on colonial America, and for obvious reasons, it is impossible to interview people who knew George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. However, her advice has helped me on my own endeavors. This spring break, as part of a project for Dr. Pierce’s HIST 315 (North Carolina History) class, I interviewed two potters in the central Piedmont, one of whom was a distant relative (third cousin once removed.) She recommended recording with one’s phone as a backup; there is a great third-party app from DigiPom called, rather appropriately, Easy Voice Recorder. (Disclaimer: I have not received any compensation from DigiPom for this app; I simply find it great and easy to use.) It is available for iOS, Android, and even BlackBerries through Amazon (presumably for attorneys with them who want good dictation.)  I ended up having to rely on a phone recording for my second interview, as the ZOOM voice recorder I rented through Ramsey Library died.

Human conversation is not as “neat” as we wish – there are plenty of “ums,” “uhs,” and other types of unintelligible slag one must mine through in order to get the “gold.” Yet once someone finds that gold, the payoff is incredible rewarding.

For those of my classmates who plan to transcribe an oral history, I suggest taking it slowly and giving yourself plenty of time before uploading the transcript. It will take more than you wish, and it will frustrate you, but it is a valuable experience any serious historian should try at least once.

It will not be easy to get back into the saddle this week, but we will be able to do it. I hope everyone had a great spring break, and I look forward to meeting with our computer science colleagues this Friday.