This abbreviated project abstract is from our newest participant, Jeanne Kessler of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. She hopes to discuss the project and/or some of its accessibility issues on Wednesday.

Bringing Oral Histories to Life – Unlocking the Power of the Spoken Word

The National World War II Museum (NWWIIM) is leading a project with National History Day (NHD) to design and implement a methodology enabling video oral histories to be accessed and explored in innovative ways. Content will be made available to a wider audience, who will have the ability to participate in describing and referencing oral histories in a manner not currently possible.

Conventionally, video oral histories have been organized and accessed via unit-level metadata focused on finding an individual interview within a collection. This is equivalent to having access to a book, but not an index of the passages where particular themes or topics are discussed. In oral history collection management, there has been little sub-unit access to content within and across interviews. Additionally, cumbersome large unit auditing is time consuming, resulting in the major underutilization of oral histories. Digitization and new tools make media access possible, but the absence of clear models and approaches has been a major obstacle to wider use of oral history collections. The challenge is less technological than intellectual and conceptual.

In a 3-year project, beginning in October, 2009, the NWWIIM is addressing accessibility issues by:

• Segmenting 200 digitized oral histories from World War II veterans and indexing each segment using a descriptive vocabulary. This will enable access within and across interviews, which is critical for thematic exploration of oral history collections.
• Users can access the histories in a flexible environment where exploration, tagging and annotating can be performed.  Users will be able to view and retrieve oral history segments by searching on ‘factual’ descriptors such as “D-Day” or querying thematic/abstract concepts such as “courage” or “weather”. User-added tags applied to segments will add personal meaning to the interview. This provides an interaction not currently available, and broadens search options when exploring oral history collections.
• By synthesizing professional and user-driven vocabularies, the project will consolidate what has been learned by using each method, to produce a working model of broad relevance and utility. Beyond its significance for World War II collections, the project will provide guidelines and models enabling greater accessibility and interactivity to other oral history collections.

NCPH THATCampers: Please note the participants tab at the upper right of the page–this is a great way to get to know one another a bit before next Wednesday. If you haven’t already done so, please update your profile information when you log in to the site.

To add your picture, it’s necessary to sign up for gravatar.com and upload a picture, which will link to this site via the email address associated with your THATCamp participation. (By the way, “gravatar” creates a Globally Recognized Avatar that’s useful for other online activities).

Does anyone want to do a quick training session/features tour at our THATCamp? Omeka? Wikis? Podcasts? I could use some advice on downloading and using Ubuntu alongside Windows. For more ideas, see thatcamp.org/help/teach/.

As of today, 12 of 45 participants have posted ideas for THATCamp NCPH. We’ve got some good momentum going . . . let’s keep it up! We need to hear something from all of you to make this event a success. Take a peek at the existing posts and then log in and post your own.

To create a post, complete the following steps:

1. log into the site with your username and password.  The login link is listed on the lower right of the screen in the META section, which is below the twitter feed.

2. once logged in, click on the Posts link on the left side of the screen

3. select the Add New button to create a new post

4. give your post a title (related to your interests) as well as a detailed description of your topic in the text box

5. make sure to select the \”Topics\” box in the categories menu on the right side of the screen.  This will allow users to see only the topics others post when they select the topics link on the website.

6. after you finish your post and select the topics box, preview your post and, once satisfied, select the publish button.  This will make your post live for others to see.  Posts appear on the homepage of THATCamp NCPH 2011.

THATCamp NCPH will begin at 9:00 am on April 6 in the Grand Central Room at the Crowne Plaza.

The conference registration area does not open until 11:00, so your NCPH conference name badge will be waiting for you when you arrive at THATCamp.

Coffee and snacks will be provided; lunch is on your own.

Our center just got funding for a three-year period to develop an online exhibit about the history of irrigation and water use on the Front Range of Colorado. We’re in the project planning phase and have several major decisions to make in the next month or so. These include interdisciplinary team development, a site design concept that is both simple and flexible, and an overall work plan for the three-year period. We’re looking for best practice recommendations, ideas for lean and effective team structures, ideal work plan scenarios, and the like. I would like to share our initial ideas about this project and hear from others with greater experience managing similar projects. I hope to get more specific information about the technical aspects of this project in other sessions of THATCamp NCPH as well.