After the Interview: The Interpretive Challenges of Oral History Video Indexing

Abstract

Digital audio and video are opening up new ways of working directly and easily with audio and video interviews. New digital tools have recently appeared that offer direct access to the audio and video “content” of oral history collections. There are many broader implications of these changes to the theory and practice of oral history. First, and foremost, digital oral history promises a move away from transcription. Recorded interviews were quickly transcribed and the original audio and video source was either set aside or (once) discarded altogether. With the loss of the orality of the source at such an early stage, the power of oral history to put a face and a name to history was muted. Analogue audio and video cassettes were ponderous to use and, as a result, underutilized. This paper documents the creation of a fully-indexed digital video database of oral history interviews relating to the displacement of paper workers in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. It describes the challenges involved with the development of new interpretative technologies from a humanities standpoint and emphasizes the need to adapt nascent indexing software to oral historical practice, rather than the reverse. Such video-indexing may be an alternative to the time-consuming practice of transcription and, more importantly, it allows for the examination of data – body language, facial expression, and intonation – which traditional transcripts tend to ignore. Likewise, indexing makes specific portions of interviews – the discussion of a labour dispute from various perspectives, for example – more easily accessible.