From my readings this week, I learned a lot of valuable information that I will be applying to my interviews going forward.
From the guide, I also learned many things about conducting interviews, such as:
- Asking them not only about their past but about their present.
- Really questioning yourself about the goals of your research before conducting the interviews.
- Questioning yourself about what sorts of questions you would like to be asked if you were in their shoes.
Another piece of valuable knowledge I took away from the Smithsonian Interview Guide was how it mentions not to overlook individuals who aren’t necessarily elders as being incapable of being tradition bearers. It was interesting to think about how knowledge and traditions can be preserved and passed on in unexpected ways, and it made me reconsider who I might view as valuable sources of information in my own research.
I have been taking Computer Vision (C.V.) this semester, and because of the use of C.V. in this subject, I have been having a lot of thoughts about how this technology intersects with the historical work discussed in the readings.
C.V. plays a huge role in digitization, which connects directly to preserving historical interviews and other archival materials. It makes me think about how C.V. could be applied to automatically transcribe and categorize interviews, making them more accessible to researchers. This overlap between my field and the readings has given me a new appreciation for the role of technology in historical preservation.
As for A Voice from the Past, I have mainly been thinking about the digitization of this medium as it relates to my field. Since I study computer science, I found it interesting how digital preservation techniques like AI enhanced restoration or C.V. powered indexing can impact the accessibility of historical voices. The ability to analyze and enhance older recordings using modern methods could make these voices clearer and more widely available.
It also raises questions about authenticity – if we enhance a recording to make it more intelligible, at what point does it stop being a faithful representation of the original? Ethical considerations that hadn’t previously been thought about now seem quite important when dealing with these archives.
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