New Dialogues with the Research Community.

About the Collection, Management and

Dissemination of Interview Data

Marion Wittenberg

www.dans.knaw.nl

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

• Paula WitkampPaula.witkamp@dans.knaw.nl

• Rene van HorikRene.van.horik@dans.knaw.nl

2008 conference on archiving oral history data

Veteran tapes project Enhanced publication

Collaboration of:• Veteran InstituteStef Scagiola

• KWALONFred Wester

• SPEXHenk van den Heuvel, Eric Sanders

• DANSPaula Witkamp, Rene van Horik

Source Veteran tapes project

• Veteran institute• Dutch Ministry of Defense• Veterans (WOII until recent missions)• Collection of 1000 interviews • Subset of 25 interviews with transcriptions

Research Corpus Veteran tapes project

• 25 interviews • Each between 2 – 2.5 hrs• Recorded at 44 kHz• Stored in 16 kHz, 16 bits wave• Orthographically transcribed and aligned with

audio• Rich body of metadata• Stored at DANS with Persistent Identifiers

Researchers Veteran tapes project

7 disciplines 7 perspectives

• Ideas about allies and enemies • Discourse about acts of violence• Moral dilemmas• Religion and spirituality• How to deal with shocking incidents• We and Them: ideas about local inhabitants • Personal experiences versus formal history

The fragment fitter tool Veteran tapes project

Find fragment

Inspect audio

Adjust transcription

Add annotation

Select metadata

Enhanced publication Veteran tapes project

The data behind the publication

Interview and fragment

Audio

Transcription

Metadata

Problems and drawbacks Veteran tapes project

• Access to the fragment versus access to the whole interview

• Rating system• Decontextualisation• Difference between disciplines• Archive format versus analyses format• Persistent identifiers• Citation

Telling Witnesses of WOII

• Project of the Ministry of Welfare • Interviews with hundreds of eyewitnesses

to the Second World War on video• Digital core collection oral history

Things to be solved

• 47 different project leaders to deal with• Much diversity: researchers, filmmakers,

archives, organisations like the Anne Frank foundation

• How do we get the appropriate metadata• Which formats? Archive versus distribution• Streaming server embedded in our

archiving system• Privacy aspects

Cooperation – ‘Verteld verleden’

• Platform for oral history in the Netherlands• Institute for audio visual heritage - Beeld en

Geluid • Institute for women history – Aletta• Institute on language and culture in the

Netherlands – Meertens Institute• DANS – Data Archiving and Networked Services

Many oral history data