Mining oral history collections using music information retrieval methods

Recent work at the Sussex Humanities Lab, a digital humanities research program at the University of Sussex, has sought to address an identified gap in the provision and use of audio feature analysis for spoken word collections. Traditionally, oral history methodologies and practices have placed emphasis on working with transcribed textual surrogates, rather than the digital audio files created during the interview process. This provides a pragmatic access to the basic semantic content, but obviates access to other potentially meaningful aural information; our work addresses the potential for methods to explore this extra-semantic information, by working with the audio directly. Audio analysis tools, such as those developed within the established field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR), provide this opportunity. This paper describes the application of audio analysis techniques and methods to spoken word collections. We demonstrate an approach using freely available audio and data analysis tools, which have been explored and evaluated in two workshops. We hope to inspire new forms of content analysis which complement semantic analysis with investigation into the more nuanced properties carried in audio signals

Oral History as Evidence

Ronald J. Grele presents the stages of development, as well as main streams that make up contemporary oral history – from archiving, through social and educational activities, to historical research. The most noteworthy of these are aspects that constitute a part of the new social history, which implement the postulate of recording and extracting the grassroots perspective on history. [Translation based on: R.J. Grele, “Oral History as Evidence”, [in:] Handbook of Oral History, T.L. Charlton, L.E. Myers, R. Sharpless (eds.), Oxford 2006, p. 43–101. The permission to publish the translated version of the article has been granted by the author and the Rowman & Littlefield Publisher publishing house. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. (editor’s note)]Ronald J. Grele przedstawia etapy rozwoju i główne nurty współtworzące współczesną historię mówioną – od tworzenia archiwów, przez działalność społeczną i edukacyjną, po badania historyczne. Wśród nich na szczególną uwagę zasługują te, wpisujące się w nurt nowej historii społecznej, realizujące postulat zapisania i wydobycia oddolnej perspektywy historycznej. Tłumaczenie na podstawie: R.J. Grele, Oral History as Evidence, [w:] Handbook of Oral History, red. T.L. Charlton, L.E. Myers, R. Sharpless, Oxford 2006, s. 43–101. Zgoda na publikację przetłumaczonej wersji artykułu została udzielona przez Autora i wydawnictwo Rowman & Littlefield Publisher. Licencja CC BY-SA 4.0 (przyp. red.)