WRD 401: Composing Oral History
Fernheimer, Spring 2019
Essay 1: Making Oral History Accessible with OHMS
Project 1: Making Oral History Accessible with OHMS: Transcript Authenticating, Indexing and Interview Description (Summary Headnote) Authoring, and Self-Reflection Assignment (25% total)
Timetable:
Project 1 Indexing and Interview Summary (Descriptive Headnote) Authoring
1/17 Assignment Prompt Distributed
1/22 Interviews Assigned, OHMS Accounts distributed and activated
1/24 Draft Transcript Authentication due
2/12 Project 1.1 and Reflective Essay due
2/26 Project 1.1 Instructor Feedback distributed
3/21 Project 1.2 Revised Index including At least 2 Linked Primary documents due
3/28 Instructor Feedback 1.2 Distributed
4/16 Project 1.3 Due
4/30 Project 1.4 Final Index, Interview Summary due
The Basics
Using OHMS, you will work with a partner to index approximately 90- 120 minutes of oral history interview(s) to make them more accessible and searchable for other researchers. (Each student will be primarily responsible for one half.) You will first listen to the interview with the transcript at hand to authenticate the transcript. Then you will work with your peer partner to create a digital index (with partial transcript, GPS coordinates, contextual links, keywords, and segment synopses) and a 250-300 word summary of the interview to be used to provide potential researchers with an overview of the interview itself. Finally, you will individually write a 3-4 page (750-1000 word) reflective essay detailing the choices you made and why you made them, how you reached decisions about your choices as a team, how the collaboration worked, and what you learned from the process. The authenticated transcript, essay, summary, and index are due in final form on 1/29 and are worth 20% of your grade. Make sure you proofread them carefully and revise them BEFORE you turn them in. Your will turn in the 250-300 word Interview Description (Headnote Summary) as a shared Googledoc, named as WRD112_S19_P1_Sum_NameofInterviewee_YourfirstnamelastinitialYourpeersfirstnamelastinitial, share it with jfernheimer@gmail.com and be sure to grant me “editing privileges”). Make sure self-reflection paper is turned in electronically (using the proper naming conventions: WRD112_S19_P1_indexreflect_yourlastnamefirstinital) to the appropriate place on Canvas as well as in hard copy in class. Remember that papers are due at the beginning of class. Even though you are likely to cite only a few sources (the interview, maybe some materials from the texts we’ve read), you must include a “Works Cited” which follows MLA format, and I’ve included some quick tips below. This essay is worth 25% of your overall grade for the course (5% authentication, 10 % indexing, 5% index summary, 5% 3-4 pg reflection).
The Rationale
As you’ve learned from Portelli and Moosnick, oral histories are a valuable resource for researchers looking to better understand a variety of topics and historical moments. The problem as you all experienced first-hand (!) is that in their “raw” form oral histories are not nearly as user-friendly as we’d like them to be. Your task in this assignment is to work with a partner to help make the oral history you’ve been assigned more user-friendly by indexing it using the OHMS system. In so doing, you will make rhetorical choices that call attention to segments of the interview you think other researchers will deem valuable. You should be thinking about an audience of potential researchers who would be interested in Lexington history, diversity, race relations, cultural heritage, immigration, small-business owners, professionals, university organizations, and any of the other interesting gems that came up while you were listening to complete the transcript authentication.
Referring to both “Indexing Interviews in OHMS: An Overview” and “OHMS: Getting Started” p. 6-10 especially, you will create an index that provides a useful “table of contents” and series of annotations to help make the interview more searchable and accessible. You are responsible for filling in the following details in the OHMS interface: “140 character Tweet-like partial transcript, segment title, keywords, segment synopsis, GPS coordinates, and hyperlink.” Note—you can only include one set of coordinates and one hyperlink per index point or “segment,” so it is up to you to select the elements that you deem most representative of each segment and/or create additional index points as deemed rhetorically appropriate. There are typically 12-15 access points or segments for each hour of interview, so keep this in mind when trying to decide where/how to break up the interview into smaller “chapters/segments.” Generally, you want to avoid having too many segments, which can overwhelm a researcher and too few which will make it difficult for him/her/they to find what they need. Since you will be making (sometimes difficult) choices about which metadata best represents the content, you will write a 3-4 page paper reflecting on this project and explaining/justifying the interpretive choices you made.
Tips for Getting Started (Invention!)
Your job is to become a resident expert on the interview assigned to you. First you will listen very closely and carefully to authenticate the transcript, following the guidelines outlined in the Nunn Center tutorial. Bring any questions you have about spellings, place names, etc. to class before turning in the final transcript authentication. *Note, each of you will first work independently and then combine your observations into a single transcript authentication. I recommend that you use Googledocs to annotation your authentications.
Tips for Indexing Once you’ve listened to the interview all the way through a few times, you may feel comfortable getting started with indexing right away. Before you do anything else, you’ll probably want to listen to the interview you were assigned at least once more, taking notes the whole while. After you’re done, close your eyes and brainstorm a list of all the possible ways you can imagine that this interview would be useful to someone doing research—use this brainstorm as a guide for thinking about how to break the interview into smaller segments.
Use the time-stamp function to remind yourself of sections you find particularly interesting (or maybe even confusing), and make sure you return to them after you’ve listened all the way through. After you’ve listened to the interview once, jot down some notes about your overall impressions:
How would you describe the interaction between the interviewee/er?
What particular moments stand out in your mind and why?
What did you learn about minority/ethnic/other life in Kentucky?
What family or place names were mentioned (either by the interviewer or interviewee)?
Your interview will be assigned from following list:
- Scooter Stein, UK Alum, currently works for the Sheriff’s office (1 hr 23 minutes, 1 student)
- Rosie Moosnick, author of Accommodation and Audacity (1 hr 32 minutes, 2 students)
- Gail Cohen, former Lexington public school teacher, lived in Lexington for 50+ years (1hr 55, minutes 2 students)
- Josh Wirtschafter, Brother of Rabbi Wirtschafter (1 hr—1 student)
- Carol Wirtschafter. One of the founders of Camp Shalom (Lexington-based Jewish summer camp), mother of current Reform Rabbi (1 hr 53 minutes—2 students)
- Susan Ezrine-longtime member of OZS—connection to Warren Rosenthal and horse farms (1 hr 13 minutes—1 student)
- Kathy Grossman—former president of Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass, (1hr 14 minutes—1 student)
- Raphael Finkel—UK professor of computer science, active in Yiddishvoch (2hr 16 minutes—2 students)
- Alex Rosenzweig—current JHFE scholar, UK student/member of Hillel —(1 hr 24 minutes 1 student)
- Lowell Nigoff—local entrepreneur, ran a successful auto mechanic business, discusses Israel and Zionism (1 hr 39 min, 2 students)
- Gerald Benjamin—UK alum class of 197X?, former member of UK marching band, successful businessman in Atlanta (1hr 45 min—2 students)
- William Leffler—former rabbi of Temple Adath Israel Lexington (1 hr 22 min, 1 student)
- Gregory Davis—MD, loosely and briefly connected with UK Hillel (1 hr 53 min—2 students)
- Maya Craemer—graduate of Henry Clay high school, current student at Vanderbilt—member of Temple of Adath Israel Lexington (2 hr 9min, 2 students)
- Julius Fr1edman –artist (2 hr interview—2 students)
- Arthur Salomon (1/2 hr)—Lexington entrepreneur (1 student)
- Linda Rayvin—local Lexington Jewish community member, very involved with Hadassah women’s organization (2 hr 47 minutes, 3 students)
- Shelly Zegart (draft index exists)-(1hr 44 minutes—2 students)—involved with quilts, partial index exists
- Janice Crane—5th(?) generation Jewish Lexingtonian (1hr 9 minutes, 1 student)
- Mike Ades, Janice Crane, Beth Goldstein, Joe Rosenberg, JoAnn Miller, Barney Miller (1hr 55 min—2 students—discusses historic Lexington, Jewish-owned shops downtown past and present)
Citation Guidelines–use MLA formatting. Below you will find some examples for items you may end up citing.
Course home page:
Kirkpatrick, Judith. American Literature Online. Course home page. Jan.-May 2003. Dept. of
English. Kapi’olani CC. 21 Feb. 2003.< http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kirkpatr/s03>.
(From Faigley’s The Brief Penguin Handbook, Second Edition, p.279)
Publication by a Group or Organization:
“State of the Birds, USA 2004.” Audubon. 2004. National Audubon Society. 19 Nov. 2004
<http://www.audubon.org/bird/stateofthebirds/>.
(From Faigley’s The Brief Penguin Handbook, Second Edition, p.274)
In general you should always include the
Name of the author. “The Title of the article or part of the website you looked at.” The name of
The publication or the site on which the part you looked at is located. The date of the
Publication. The date you accessed the site.
< http: The URL for the site enclosed in brackets—copy it exactly–copy and paste>
Oral History Interview
Fugazzi, Fred. Interview with Ronald F. White. Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. July 17,
- Digital. http://www.kentuckyoralhistory.org/interviews/19708. 10 September
2013.
*note, the name of the Interviewee is privileged—Fred Fugazzi is the interviewee here
Grading Criteria
Your summary and reflective essay will be evaluated by me based on the following criteria:
- Clear and concise statement of your choices
• Sophisticated reflection and justification for your indexing choices.
• Effective essay organization.
• Clear and precise sentence-level syntax, grammar, and style.
Tips for Peer Review: How do Provide Strong Indexing/Index Summary Feedback
Upon first glance, does looking at the list of segment titles of all the index points give you an overall sense of what the interview is about? If yes, describe what that impression is. If not, why not? Do the titles do an appropriate job of mapping content to general concepts and subjects?
Is the number of index points appropriate for the length of the interview? (Remember Dr. Boyd and the Nunn Center recommend 12-15 index points per hour of interview time).
Do the time stamps reflect appropriate lengths for the segments (no more than 5-7 minutes each)?
Do the titles for the index points follow the Nunn Center’s conventions?
Are each of the requisite fields filled out appropriately for each index point, following the Nunn Center’s conventions?
Do they include an accurate partial transcript, a useful segment synopsis, descriptive
keywords, GPS coordinates?
Is the segment synopsis detailed enough? (It should be more than one sentence and more like three or four sentences).
If there isn’t a GPS coordinate filled in for a segment, suggest an appropriate way to include one.
Do the keywords seem appropriate? Are ideas missing that could be provided in the keywords? Are all proper nouns (individual and place names) included in the keywords?
Summary
The overall interview summary should be 250-300 words long. Does the summary give you a good sense of what the interview is about? Does it capture the essence of the interview? Is it too detailed? Not detailed enough? What else did you hope to learn about the interview from the summary? What information is included in the index but not reflected in the summary?