Technical Information
Principles and Policies
To ensure the quality and objectivity of our oral history interviews, we follow these principles, and policies:
1. We abide by the Principles and Standards of the Oral History Association.
2. We recognize the principles, rights, technical standards, and obligations for the creation and preservation of source material that is authentic, useful, and reliable.
3. We also recognize the obligations toward and considerations of the interviewee, profession, and public, as well as mutual obligations between sponsoring organizations and interviewers.
4. The original audio recordings and finalized transcript are retained and preserved at the University Archives & Manuscripts of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Please contact University Archives staff to request user copies of the audio recording or transcripts. Additional copies of the audio and transcripts will also be made available at the Greensboro Public Library.
Project Procedures
The project had 3 areas of concern: audio preservation, editing of the transcripts, and content accessibility. Procedures for each area are described below.
Audio Preservation
The preservation of the audio included several steps. First, analog duplicate copies of the master analog tapes were made, using the Tascam 322 Dual Cassette Deck. Second, sub-master digital audio WAV files were saved onto archival quality compact discs, using Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.0. Third, sub-master analog copies of the digital audio WAV files were made, using Sony Sound Forge 8.0. Fourth, analog user copies of the analog duplicate tapes were made, using the Tascam 322 Dual Cassette Deck. Fifth, sub-master digital audio WAV were created from the master analog tapes, using Sony Sound Forge 8.0. Finally, mp3 user copies were created from compressed WAV files, using Sony Sound Forge 8.0.
Transcript Preparation
The process of preparing the transcripts for web publishing involved two phases. The first phase involved converting existing paper transcripts to a digital format via scanning. Utilizing Omnipage Pro 12.0, an optical character recognition (OCR) software, pdf files were created and then converted to Microsoft Word documents. Transcripts were then subjected to multiple edits which were performed by several staff members and student assistants. The first edit involved listening to the audio of the interview while removing transcription errors or unnecessary OCR characters from the Microsoft Word document. The second edit involved listening to the audio while editing the transcript. The third edit verified that the written transcript represented the audio of the interview, and tried to elucidate the [unclear] or [?] marks within the transcript. Finally, the transcript was copyedited for correctness and consistency in punctuation, capitalization, spelling, formatting, etc., according to a style guide specifically created for this project.
Content Accessibility
Greensboro VOICES utilizes ASP and ADO to serve data and dynamically generate Dublin Core and MARC meta-data from a custom-built Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database which contains over 90 index fields per interview. Server-side includes are used to achieve a consistent appearance and cut down on cosmetic maintenance. On the client side, Greensboro VOICES uses XHTML 1.0 and CSS to achieve maximum accessibility and consistency across platforms. It does not use frames or Java. Client-side scripting is limited to non-essential functionality and where tables are used to format visual presentation, they are labelled as such.
For additional technical information or questions concerning our policies, please contact Cat McDowell.
