University of Washington

Exploration Seminar Program 2010

Erasmus Studio Rotterdam14-9-2010

Access to content: the after sales of conducting oral history

Stef Scagliola

Veteraneninstituut Doorn

Background• military historian – social history at the Erasmus

University Rotterdam – history combined with the insights of the social sciences

• italian background – perspective from the ‘outside’ on Dutch history and historiography

• PhD 2002 : The Burden of War – Coming to terms with Dutch war crimes committed in Indonesia during the decolonisation war 1945-1949

• Interviewproject Dutch Veterans – 2006-2010

1000 interviews with a representative number of veterans of all conflicts and

military missions in which the Netherlands were involved.

(WWII, Decolonisation war Indonesia, Korea, UN-Libanon, ex-Jugoslavia, Cambodia, Irak, Afghanistan)

Goal of the Interviewproject Dutch Veterans

Proces generated data

• collections based on a broad generic topic-list,

• meant to be archived and consulted by a broad range of target groups

• no anonimity, consent has been arranged• meta-data available• if recent, recorded digitally

research generated data

• collection with the purpose of answering a specific research question

• meant for the exclusive use of the researcher (but payed with public money!)

• in social sciences ethical code of anonimity• often no consistent meta-data structure• old carriers, need to be digitized• data end up in the desk draw and perish

ICT- solutions

• long term digital preservation• tools to give selective access to authorized

researchers• tools to facilitaite re-use of qualitative data• tools to compare data from different

disciplines• tools to give direct access to spoken document• tools to enhance qualitative data

• different mindset = sharing, preserving, checking, overcoming barriers

Oral history archive – specific features

advantages• Informal social

structures• Uneasy truths that

remain unwritten• Daily life• Emotions, perception• Insights in transition

from civilian to military and back

• Giving ‘voice’ to people low in the hierarchy

disadvantages

• Failing memory• Mythmaking• Selfjustification• Manipulation• Way of settling

accounts• Wisdom in hindsight

Retrospective life-story- interviews

• semi-structured topiclist• jouth – education – preparation for war/military mission – experiences during mission/conflict - return and adjustment - retrospective• avarage time: 2,5 hours

• older veterans: conscription, real war, long periods, look back on their lives• jounger veterans: professional army, ‘peace missions’, maximum of 4 months, relatively young

Representative?• it’s easier to talk about victimhood then someone’s role as perpetrator• dramatic or heroic narrative is appealing, but process of ‘accomodation’ is more frequent• active military have code of secrecy• dependence on the urge to tell; more present with people with low status, grievances, storytelling capacity, • executives tend to reproduce institutional discourse (until you turn the recorder off!)• 75% of time war is quite boring!

criminal /international law against

protection of privacy /guarantee of anonimity

• Interviews about circumstances of war yield accusations and confessions, how do you deal with them?

• How do you deal with the mentioning of third parties? Hearsay, gossip?

• Are you going to warn people that accounts on war crimes or crimes against humanity are going to have legal consequences?

Logistics!• the interviewer has to make the appointment and has to receive a proper briefing about the person concerned in order to be able to address him or her in an adequate way

• older or traumatized people need special attention after the interview, the interview creates a bond that tends to be prolonged, are your interviewers willing and able to take care of the aftermath?

• burning and sending copy of CD to respondents: a boring, time consuming task that has to be performed with accuracy, dependency on voluntaries is tricky

Logistics!• Besides the intangible story respondents

have all kinds of sources that are unique and extremly valuable for research in combination with the interview: foto’s, film-footage, artifacts, diaries, letters, memoires

• Are you going to ask for this material?

• If they offer it to you, can you take care of it in the longrun?

• If they they agree to copy the material, have you provided for logistics and conditions for use of it in the releaseform?

Logistics!

• The interview-technique has to be monitored right from the start of the project in order to get interviews that all have rich details and comparable sub-themes

• The accuracy of documenting the meta-data, making interviewers sign the release-form and conveying specific requests to the managing team has to be monitored. This to prevent time-consuming extra research and phone calls

• If you want an archive that is an adequate source for research you have to be demanding to your interviewers, if you can’t pay them as professionals, be sure you take good care of them (credits on public occasions, privileges, training possibilities)

Public or restricted access?

• Our experience: we formulated a text for the release-form stating that researchers can consult the interviews and metadata , but are obliged to anonimize the repondents in their publications.

• New insight: many veterans don’t want to remain anonymous, they want their credits as ‘authors’ of their story, especially when they are engaged in educational activities (visit to schools etc.)

• Make sure you offer various possibilities on the releaseform, so that you can broaden your potential.

Organisation of the project• Goal: collect 1.000 audio-interviews with a

representative number of Dutch veterans• Coördinator + Assistent • 15 trained free-lance interviewers distributed

over the country• Three times a year training courses and 1 x

personal evaluation• Three times a year meeting with the Board of

Advisors, representatives of academic institutions/research centres/Military Academy

• Website with password protected access: http://interview.veteraneninstituut.nl

Website (1)

Website (2)

Website (3)

Website (4)

Website (5)

Website (6)

Website (7)

The Veteran Tapes•Combined effort by the Veteran Institute and Data Archive Networked Services/ Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (DANS/NWO) to bring together Oral History and Social Science.

•full text-transcriptions of 25 of our interviews (we have a total of 480 at this moment) on various military conflicts/missions (1940 - now)

•diverse group of researchers (theology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, discourse analysis, methodology) have been invited to write an article based on the same set of interviews.

•The project is meant to prove that this type of collections can be of use to social scientists of various disciplines, as long as a set of conditions for the reuse of qualitative data is met.

Veteran Tapes: enhanced publications

•Objective: Link structure for rich biographical reports, including links to external sources and fragments of recorded audio (aligned via ASR)

•Challenges: transcript alignment, NE relation detection, interactive timelines and maps, topic classification, result presentation, harmonisation of reference styles, faceted IPR handling

•Further aims: explore the (dis)similarities in user needs for the various disciplines involved, and prepare for processing larger volumes, stimulate resource sharing.

Buchenwald survivers site (Dutch)

• interviewees: survivers of camp Buchenwald

• 38 interviews (0.5 -2.5 hours) recorded as video

• facetted metadata: summary, speaker profile, elaborate description of what was said

• indexing via ASR • users frequently choose to view all

available information types• Fore more details: www.buchenwald.nl

Access tools for interviews

• Automatic speech transcription• Interface design• Crossmedia linking

All documented in: Access to recorded interviews: a research

agendain: ACM journal 2008, F. De Jong et al.

speech recognition

Acoustic model

Language model

transcript

Lexicon

- Transcript is basis for time stamped index

- Transcript supports search for what is said when

50 h audio250-600 M words

65 k words

Steps in speech transcription

speech/speaker detection

multimediainterviewarchive

metadata

speech recognition

automatic speech transcription

speaker detection

transcripts with time stamps and semantic annotations

summarization

speech/non-speech

detection

text mining tagging

automatic metadata extraction

users: general public,

archivists, researchers

query

search engine

resultpresentation

Access to interviews: transcript generation

multimediainterviewarchive

metadata

speech recognition

automatic speech transcription

speaker detection

transcripts with time stamps and semantic annotations

summarization

speech/non-speech

detection

text mining tagging

automatic metadata extraction

users: general public,

archivists, researchers

query

search engine

resultpresentation

Access to interviews: interface design

multimediainterviewarchive

metadata

speech recognition

automatic speech transcription

speaker detection

transcripts with time stamps and semantic annotations

summarization

speech/non-speech

detection

text mining tagging

automatic metadata extraction

users: general public,

archivists, researchers

query

search engine

resultpresentation

Access to interviews: crossmedia linking

newspapers

related content

html images

Rich result list

Video playback of result item

Break!

Oral history in Seattle

Democratization process of history?

• Giving voice to everyone on the internet?• What is our common denominator?• Is there too much history?

Who have the possibility to join?

• Limited access to internet (age, education, development)

• What do we know about the factors that determine historical socialization?

• What is relationship between digital involvement and influence of curriculum in schools an

Circumstances that facilitate the process of democratization of history

• Post-materialistic society with needs such as self-realization• Choice biography (individual determines life-style)• Individualization (less dependence on group)• Informalization (less hierarchy)• Intensified lives (pressure on self-realization)• Internationalization (less distances in time and space)• In post-industrial societies never in history such a high % of highly

skilled individuals that are exempt from labour after 65• Easy access to technology through user-friendly popular

reproduction techniques and ICT-applications • Cultural heritage elite has lost control on exclusive interpretation

of the past• The state gradually loses control on the socialization process of its

citizens: national identity competes with local, regional, ethnic

How is this process of democratization taking shape?

• Members of communities collect their social and cultural heritage on the internet

• Individuals visit genealogical sites (higher ratings then porno-sites!)• When celebrating live-events (marriage, funerals) the personal

biography takes the place of generic rituals (the holy mass, the preach)

• Rise of historical events/products at the local/regional level• Historical culture is developing in the direction of entertainment• Growing interest in oral history; gives voice to non-hegemonic strata

of society• The influcence of anthropology and psychology on the writing of

history: concepts and theories that apply to the study of individuals and small groups

• Increased interest in micro-history and personal memoirs

Doubts on the emancipatory effect of internet

• Internet as echo-well and playground for individualism• Process of dis-intermediation• The world that we share gets smaller

• What about inconvenient truths?• What about myths?• Who mediates between a range of positive illusions• And a truthful representation of the past?

•Thank you and have a good trip home!