Week 7-8

OK!  The start of week 8.

I have been busy!  I researched best practices for audio preservation and discussed them with the librarian and the GA responsible for handling the audio files.  They had not been saving or recording in WAVE files, which supports more data and is the conservation standard.  It took some convincing of how we need to be more concerned about the preservation of the audio than how much space the files are taking up or how long it takes for WAVE files to download.

To help speed up the transcription process, the Stark Center decided to change the transcription process. Since Glifos does not allow users to use hot keys while transcribing, we have started using a program called Express Scribe that does allow for hot keys to be used. I created a quick text-based tutorial and trained the interns on it. The main problem with the new program is that the interns work on several different computers at the Stark Center.  The file that contains their transcription could be started on one computer and finished on a different one.

One of the interns is having trouble with the project.  He is simply not invested or motivated to learn how to transcribe or to learn the program.  The Stark Center knows this and they want to let him do something else for the summer.  Another intern was only working for Summer I so she finished up last week.

The other two interns are doing pretty well.  It's tedious work and I feel like I have very little to motivate them with.  The Stark Center wants the interns to do only what they want to do so I feel like very little transcribing actually gets done.

I feel like the project is going successfully!  This summer was supposed to be a test to figure out the best way to go about doing the transcription and I think we are doing just that.  We won't be able to meet the goal of how many transcriptions we wanted to get done, but when I made that goal, I was unaware that the interns would be working on several other Stark Center projects throughout the summer.