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Books With VoicesPaper Transcripts as a Tangible Interface to Oral Histories
PublicationsBooks With Voices: Oral HistoriesCarlo Séquin, An Oral HistoryDavid Patterson, An Oral History News Articles02
December 2002 13 November
2002 Other Oral History Technology and ProjectsCommercial Transcription ToolsOral History Projects and Technology
Researchers Scott Klemmer This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0084367 Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF). |
Our
contextual inquiry into the practices of oral historians unearthed
a curious incongruity: while oral historians consider interview
recordings to be a central historical artifact, these recordings
sit unused after a written transcript is produced. We hypothesized
that this is largely because books are more usable than recordings,
so we created Books with Voices: bar-code augmented paper transcripts
enabling fast, random access to digital video interviews on a PDA.
We present quantitative results of an evaluation of this tangible
interface with 13 participants. They found this lightweight, structured
access to original recordings to be useful, offering substantial
benefits with minimal overhead. Oral historians found a level of
emotion in the video not available in the printed transcript. The
video also helped readers clarify the text and observe nonverbal
cues.