Ball State University Libraries Staff Collaborate to Make Middletown Digital Oral History Collection Searchable

Researchers can now search 42 oral history interviews in the Middletown Digital Oral History Collection, at http://libx.bsu.edu/MidOrHist/midorhist.php.

For the Middletown Jewish Oral History Project I, Dr. Warren Vander Hill conducted interviews with Martin Schwartz and Mort Pazol, among others. The Black Muncie Oral History Project, conducted by Hurley C. Goodall and J. Paul Mitchell, includes interviews with Muncie, Indiana citizens such as Ray Buley and Lucille Williams.

Each oral history interview includes a streaming wma audio file and a transcript in PDF format. The inclusion of transcripts makes it possible for researchers to read along as they listen to the interviews or identify specific sections of the interview for listening. By providing the transcripts in PDF format, users can also print them for further study and analysis.

The transcripts provide students and faculty with several ways to search the collection. They can search each transcript for subjects, names, or places as well as search across all of the oral history interviews and the larger Ball State University Digital Media Repository, a project of the University Libraries.

Writing transcripts to accompany the oral history interviews has been a combined effort of people throughout the University Libraries, including staff and student assistants from various units within these groups:
· Access Services
· Acquisitions Services
· Archives and Special Collections Research Center
· Cataloging and Metadata Services
· Center for Middletown Studies
· Geospatial Center and Map Collections
· Metadata and Digital Initiatives

These personnel have spent many hours listening to the interviews to ensure that the transcripts are accurate. The transcripts are then checked and rechecked at least twice by Archives and Special Collections Research Center and Collection Resources Management personnel for accuracy.

In our training for this project, we selected the Baylor University Institute for Oral History Transcribing Style Guide. This document guided us in transcribing the words, speech patterns, and thought patterns of the interviewees and interviewers in a way that is easy to read and uniform in structure. Copies of this guide were given to each project participant, and the guide has helped to answer many questions, such as when to include and when not to include crutch words, like ‘hm,’ ‘uh-hm,’ and ‘unh-uh.’

Metadata and Digital Initiatives personnel also created an Oral Histories Wiki which assisted in ongoing training,www.bsu.edu/libraries/wiki/index.php?title=Oral_Histories.

Using the Wiki, we share any areas not covered in the style guide with the personnel working on the project. For example, we have included “Common Capitalization and Spelling Questions,” a list of specific terms that have come up in the interviews, such as words related to Jewish and Catholic religious practices.

The City Directories and several other manuscript collections in the Archives and Special Collections Research Center have been useful in checking the spellings of names and places in Muncie, Indiana, that are often mentioned in the interviews. We have also used collections already available in the Digital Media Repository e.g., The Muncie Times and the Other Side of Middletown photographs.

To facilitate locating oral histories, metadata records have been created for each interview using Dublin Core, a back-end standard used to describe digital content in a consistent way. We created user-friendly fields, such as Interviewee, Interviewer, Date Recorded, Duration, and Subject.

In addition to providing useful information about the oral histories, metadata records allow the collection to be searched within the larger Ball State University Digital Media Repository. For example, if you do an exact phrase search for Marion, Indiana, you will find digital objects from several collections including oral histories, audio newscasts, and newspaper issues.

Another tool implemented in this collection is controlled vocabulary. In this case, controlled vocabulary refers to a standard list of authorized terms like names, places, and subjects used to describe digital artifacts in metadata records. While the Digital Media Repository can be searched using natural language, inputting descriptors in this controlled way makes it easier for researchers to find all the information related to a specific topic. For example, when referring to the Black Muncie History Project’s interviewer Hurley C. Goodall, we enter Goodall, Hurley C. Clicking on this personal name will bring up all of his interviews in the collection.

For information on the process of transcribing and describing oral history interviews, contact Amanda A. Hurford, Digital Initiatives Multimedia Developer, AAHurford@bsu.edu, (765) 285-3349 or Maren L. Read, Assistant Archivist for Manuscript Collections, MLRead@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

This newsletter article first appeared in The Library Insider 5(3): 9; March 2007.

Ball State University Libraries’ Friends of Alexander M. Bracken Library Annual Dinner and Kirkham Lecture Scheduled

The annual dinner and meeting of the Friends of the Alexander M. Bracken Library will be held on the evening of March 28, 2007, at the Ball State University Alumni Center. A reception will begin at 6 p.m. followed by dinner at 6:30 p.m.

At the business meeting following the meal, outgoing and incoming members of the Board of Governors will be recognized. Completing their three-year terms are Dr. Jayne Beilke, Mrs. Dorothy Danner, Mr. Larry Campbell, Mrs. Nancy Carlson, and Ms. Gretchen Cheesman. New Board members are Dr. Carol Flores, Mrs. Marilyn Carey, Mrs. Marianne Vorhees, Mr. Hank Milius, and Mr. Thomas Spotts.

Following the business meeting, the Kirkham Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Warren Vander Hill, Mr. Hurley C. Goodall, and Dr. John Weakland. The topic is “The Middletown Digital Oral History Collection,” which includes interviews with African-American, Jewish, and Catholic citizens of Muncie, Indiana, that were conducted from the 1970s through recent years. The University Libraries are now transcribing and digitizing these taped interviews as part of a $25,125 Library Services and Technology (LSTA) grant. The oral history collection will be available through the Ball State University Digital Media Repository, a project of the University Libraries, at http://libx.bsu.edu on the Web.

Dr. Vander Hill is Provost and Vice President Emeritus of Academic Affairs at Ball State. He conducted the two Jewish oral history projects. Mr. Goodall is a former Indiana state legislator and played pivotal roles in three different African American oral history projects. Dr. Weakland is Professor Emeritus of History. He coordinated the oral history project for the three Catholic churches in Muncie and conducted interviews for St. Mary Catholic Church.

The Kirkham Lecture is named for Dr. Bruce Kirkham, professor emeritus of English at Ball State. He was the founder and first Executive Secretary of the Friends, serving as Executive Secretary for 25 years. He retired from Ball State University in 2000.

Tickets for the dinner are $20. For information on joining the Friends or to purchase tickets, contact John B. Straw, Executive Secretary for the Friends of the Alexander M. Bracken Library, at JStraw@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

This newsletter article first appeared in The Library Insider 5(3): 8; March 2007.

African-American and Jewish Oral History Interviews from Muncie are Now Accessible through the Ball State University Digital Media Repository

Students, faculty, and researchers at Ball State University and from around the world can now hear the voices of Middletown USA as they tell the stories of the African-American and Jewish experience in Muncie, Indiana. The words illustrating the life and culture of persons past and present can be heard and read anywhere, anytime through a new collection that is now accessible through the Ball State University Digital Media Repository, a project of the University Libraries.

Two oral history collections from the University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections Research Center have been digitized and transcribed and are now available for study, research, and classroom instruction via the Internet. The audio and transcripts of the “Black Muncie Oral History Project Collection” and the “Middletown Jewish Oral History Project I Collection” can be accessed in the Digital Media Repository, http://libx.bsu.edu, under the “Middletown Digital Oral History Collection.”

The Black Muncie Oral History Project was conducted from 1971 to 1978 by Hurley C. Goodall, Ball State professor J. Paul Mitchell, and Ball State graduate students, with a grant from the Muncie Human Rights Commission. The interviews with long-time African-American residents of Muncie include discussions of subjects such as segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Depression, organized labor, and the economic, social, and religious experiences of African-Americans.

The Middletown Jewish Oral History Project I was conducted in 1978 and 1979 by Ball State University professors Warren Vander Hill and Dwight Hoover, under the sponsorship of Mr. Martin Schwartz. The interviews document Muncie’s Jewish community during the 1920s and 1930s. Topics discussed include anti-Semitism, the Ku Klux Klan, and other economic, social, and religious issues.

These two collections will be joined by two other African-American oral history collections, another Jewish one, and three collections of oral histories conducted with members from the parishes of the Catholic churches in Muncie to make up the Middletown Digital Oral History Collection.

The creation of this digital oral history resource was made possible by a $25,125 grant from the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) that was awarded to the University Libraries by the State Library of Indiana for fiscal year 2006-2007. This is the second consecutive LSTA grant for digitization awarded to the University Libraries.

For more information, contact John B. Straw, Ball State University Libraries’ Director, Digital Media Repository, JStraw@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

This newsletter article first appeared in The Library Insider 5(3): 8; March 2007.