Hi Robin,

Thanks so much for your comments.

I was thinking of a completely automated process.  I'm thinking of it as 
oral history because, at least in the initial use of the program, we'd 
use a set list of questions for all respondents.  I realise it probably 
won't be as good/useful as the product of a trained interviewer, and the 
system could accommodate machine and human mediation.  That could be a 
part of the metadata so you could analyze how people respond to human vs 
computer questioning.  Another possibility would be to use one set of 
questions for the computer interview, then invite participants to 
schedule a person-to-person interview.  Kind of like recruiting people 
into a cult.

I guess the main thing I'm trying to do is leverage technology to get 
oral histories available in an admittedly less-than-perfect form as 
quickly as possible so it can be improved via crowd sourcing.  The 
interview's the easy part, but there's often a lag until it becomes 
useable.  If people are committed and know what they're doing, the loop 
closes with a searchable archive of transcribed interviews.  This is for 
people and organizations who are kind of committed and don't really know 
what they're doing.

Thanks again for your thoughts and the links!

Paul

On 10/2/12 3:39 PM, Robin Dean wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> Just to clarify what you mean by "automated"--are you looking for a process that completely removes the need for an interviewer, and only involves people recording their answers to a questionnaire alone with a machine?
>
> The seems to be the model the "Outhouse" project was experimenting with. Even then, this article says that in one of the Outhouse initiatives, "around half" of the participants preferred to do face-to-face interviews rather than be recorded alone in a booth: http://camra.culturemap.org.au/central-darling/outhouse-research
>
> I think it's a good idea to digitally capture more first-person stories, but I have trouble thinking of them as "oral histories" without a human interviewer.
>
> If you're interested, here are a couple more projects that are looking at how to increase the number of digital oral histories that are captured, preserved, and usefully made accessible.
>
> Colorado Voice Preserve (they are currently looking at the infrastructure needed for a statewide oral history initiative, including technical requirements): http://www.voicepreserve.org
>
> IMLS "Oral History in the Digital Age" site:
> http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/
>
> Best,
>
> Robin Dean
> Director, Alliance Digital Repository
> Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries
> http://adrresources.coalliance.org/

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