Introduction

This guide is intended for student workers, fellowships, or anyone working with the CDIL on oral history projects.

The CSV transcriptions that you are reviewing have been processed through Adobe Premiere Pro, which we’ve found is the most accurate of the software available to us and can be exported directly in the format we need. That said, it isn’t perfect and that is where we can use your help!

The language and speaker names need to be accurate and tags need to be added to particular areas of the dialogue to add context for researchers. This data will then be applied to our Oral History as Data static web platform we’ve developed here at University of Idaho Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL)

Approach

Our transcription practices at U of I generally reflect those of the Oral History Association: The point of transcription is to provide all readers with searchable and accessible text versions of audio and video material.

The transcription is ideally:

• Identical to the spoken word material
• Accurately spelled in its given language and
• Provided without either adding editorial language, redacting language or “cleaning it up.” If the interviewee said “well” four times in a row, then that’s what the transcript should reflect.