Here are some of my favorite digital tools that may prove useful for core aspects of the oral history process. I will be adding to this on a continuous basis, adding new tools and categories of tools periodically, so stay tuned. Many of these tools are tools we are actively using at the Louie B. Nunn…
I wanted to take a moment to announce the official release of Exactly, the new digital tool I wrote about last month. AVPreserve and the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries have released this free tool for born-digital delivery and acquisition. In other words, create a simple and easy…
In Celebration of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, I want to offer you a sneak peak at a new tool we have developed and are readying for release. This tool will enable a user friendly way for non-archivists or non-digital preservation specialists to safely transfer born digital data to the archive utilizing stringent digital preservation standards…for free….
We now have over 9,000 oral histories at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries, where we take great care to curate these treasures. Recently, I was going through a box of old reel-to-reel and cassette tapes that were never accessioned into the oral history collection. Some were recordings of various…
Contrary to common perception, the “Wave” is not, itself a “format” but a container for housing a particular set of data. The Wave as we tend to use it in oral history, folklore and audio archival and preservation contexts is a data file based on the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) serving as a container…
I often get asked which audio software is the best to use in the archive. Again, no easy answer as to which is “best.” Most basic packages will allow you to digitize and do basic edits and then save as a major filetype. In terms of workflow, they are all, conceptually, the same. That said,…
A few years ago the Nunn Center switched to Mac computers. Being a long-time Mac user, I was thrilled about this transition, especially with regard to working with digital video. The only downside to this transition to Macs was the inevitable parting of ways with Sony’s Sound Forge, my long-time favorite audio editing platform. Since…
In 1890, folklorist and anthropologist J. Walter Fewkes declared that the study of folklore “cannot reach its highest scientific value until some method is adopted by means of which an accurate record of the stories can be obtained and preserved.”[1] Since then, there have been many revolutions in recording technologies that have transformed our capabilities…
This week we launched the first phase of the Oral History in the Digital Age project (http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu) to explore best practices for collecting, curating and disseminating oral history featuring over 70 engaging essays, a portal to over 200 best practices documents online, as well the “Thinking Big” video series. Funded by the Institute of Museum…
