That's certainly part of my inspiration, as well as the Outhouse 
Storycatcher 
<http://camra.culturemap.org.au/culturewatch/outhouse-features-nsw-indigenous-cultural-summit> 
in Australia, and other sites throughout the US such as the University 
of Georgia <http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell/exhibits/permanent.html> 
but, as far as I can tell, I don't think they are automated processes.  
I think better oral history is done with a trained interviewer and 
professional transcription, but we could get more stuff up quickly that 
would be better than nothing (and better than losing history to death), 
which over time could turn into a very rich resource for studying 
particular communities. -- Paul


On 10/2/12 8:54 AM, Johan Oomen wrote:
> Did you look at http://storycorps.org/ ?
>
>
> Best,
> Johan
> @johanoomen
>
> 2012/10/2 Paul Orkiszewski<[log in to unmask]>
>
>> Hi 4libers,
>>
>> Does anyone know of something - a kiosk, an iPad app, a web application -
>> that:
>>
>> - Initiates an oral history interview by getting demographic info and
>> permission to use and stream for scholarly purposes.
>> - Goes through a standard set of questions (in our case stuff about the
>> Appalachian State experience)
>> - Stores the metadata, permissions release, and pointers to the audio
>> files created for each question in a dbase record
>> - Processes the audio through speech recognition either in real time or
>> post-interview, and populates the dbase record with rendered text (at
>> whatever level of accuracy)
>> - Provide a search interface, where the meatadata, demographic info
>> (within reasonable privacy limits), and the transcript (however garbled) is
>> searchable.
>> - Crowd source the improvement of the transcriptions over time
>> - Package the interface as an app, and set up a machine image on Amazon
>> EC2, such that when someone uses the image and points a browser to it, it
>> goes through a set up routine so that smaller schools and historical
>> societies can set up their own sites in the cloud.  I haven't tried
>> streaming on a free tier EC2 server, but you get 30 GB of storage, so you
>> could get a fair number of hours of audio (depending on the settings)
>> before you have to start paying.
>>
>> ?
>>
>> Anyone interested in trying it with me if there's nothing already out
>> there?  I'm leaning toward iPad, so we'd need iOS, server admin, dbase, and
>> media expertise.  I have newbie-but-getting-better skill in the last 3.
>>   Zero skill in iOS.
>>
>> Paul
>> --
>>
>> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
>> ------------
>> *Paul Orkiszewski*
>> Coordinator of Library Technology Services / Associate Professor
>> University Library
>> Appalachian State University
>> 218 College Street
>> P.O. Box 32026
>> Boone, NC 28608-2026
>>
>> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>> Phone: 828 262 6588
>> Fax: 828 262 2797
>> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
>> ------------
>>

-- 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Paul Orkiszewski*
Coordinator of Library Technology Services / Associate Professor
University Library
Appalachian State University
218 College Street
P.O. Box 32026
Boone, NC 28608-2026

E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Phone: 828 262 6588
Fax: 828 262 2797
------------------------------------------------------------------------