ATC Client Spotlight: The San Francisco Opera

As you might know by now if you’ve been keeping up with our Client Spotlight blogs, we work with some exceptional, fascinating people and organizations––and this client is no exception. In fact, when we’re allowed to bring up names and specific projects that we’ve worked on (which is rarely, for confidentiality reasons), this is one of the ones we love to name-drop. After all, who wouldn’t want to be a part of the San Francisco Opera’s efforts to preserve their storied history through audio?

That’s right––this month’s Client Spotlight is about the San Francisco Opera, and the amazing initiative to digitally preserve and share various audio recordings from its rich hundred-year history. While most organizations and businesses of the arts choose to record their stories in heavy coffee-table books, the San Francisco Opera chose a different route, more fitting to their artistic medium and infinitely more accessible: recorded audio.

Streaming the First Century: Celebrating 100 Years Through Audio

The project to digitize and make accessible the San Francisco Opera’s historical recordings, “Streaming the First Century”, features 25 audio artifacts from the last century of the Opera’s history, including full performances, excerpted operas, and oral history interviews. The oral history portion of the collection includes both archival interviews with artists as well as contemporary conversations and panels with artisans and administrators. 

This treasure trove of both modern and historical audio content was released in the form of four interactive sessions, each of which contain audio commentary from Company members that help bring expert insight to anyone who would like to listen––or anyone who would like to read. That’s right––all of the audio presented in “Streaming the First Century” is available to read in transcript form, save for the opera performance audio. This means that all of the oral history content is available in both audio and text formats, which is a monumental step in ensuring that this artistically, historically, and academically rich content is accessible to all kinds of people, regardless of their preferred medium or level of hearing. We’ll actually be talking a lot more about transcripts and accessibility in a few upcoming blogs, so stay tuned for more on that subject!

As the transcription service that worked on these publicly-available oral history transcripts, we’re thrilled to see our work exhibited in an unconventional and widely accessible way. Most of the transcripts that we create are completely confidential and used for a variety of private purposes––whether it be for legal, financial, or governmental organizations––so seeing our work proudly displayed for the benefit of all on the San Francisco Opera website is something that we find pretty special. We love the idea of using transcripts as a way to make oral history accessible to all, and we hope we get to work on more projects like this one in the future! 


If you’d like to check out any of the enchanting history we’ve discussed here, we definitely recommend checking out the project in its permanent home on the San Francisco Opera’s website here. There’s a wealth of beautiful performances, glamorous photos, and––if we do say so ourselves––riveting transcripts of interviews, panels, and conversations from the historical to the modern.

ATC Client Spotlight: 92NY

At ATC, something that we take very seriously is the concept of transcription as history-making; the idea that when we set down speech in writing, we are engaging in the act of creating history, setting in stone, so to speak, something ephemeral. While we’ve worked on many projects throughout the decades that we feel fit this idea, there is perhaps no project that better exemplifies it than our work for cultural and community center 92NY on the Elie Wiesel Living Archive. But before we delve into the intricacies of that project––and the great honor that it was for us to be part of it––allow us to introduce 92NY to those who may be unfamiliar with the organization and their work. 

Founded as the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in 1874––often referred to as the YMHA or simply “the Y”––92NY began as a secular organization with the aim of enriching the social and literary lives of its members. Originally offering activities such as musical performances, literary readings, fitness classes, and various forms of adult education (such as ESL classes for New York’s immigrant population), the YMHA grew steadily throughout the years, eventually rebranding as 92nd Street Y, or 92Y, in 1975. Nowadays, the organization has vastly expanded its programming, offering a myriad of classes, talks, performances, screenings, readings, and resources to New York residents, both within the Jewish community as well as outside of it. This year, to better represent its roots and history in NYC, the organization rebranded once more as The 92nd St Y, New York––or 92NY for short.

The Elie Wiesel Living Archive

In 2020 and 2021, 92NY set out to accomplish something that would make history––to digitize Professor Elie Wiesel’s 180 lectures, readings, and conversations that took place over the course of over 45 years at various 92NY facilities. Elie Wiesel, a renowned political activist, Nobel laureate, author, and Holocaust survivor, is one of the most respected and influential Jewish figures of the 20th and 21st centuries, and 92NY recognized that the contents of his many lectures required careful, delicate, and accurate preservation. We at ATC are incredibly honored to have been chosen to transcribe all of Professor Wiesel’s lectures––an act of history-making that we undertook with the utmost care. With many of us having Jewish cultural backgrounds ourselves (including our founder, Sandy Poritzky, a first generation American who grew up in a Yiddish-speaking home), it’s impossible to describe the reverence with which we handled this project, as well as the pride that we take in having transcribed and captioned Professor Wiesel’s lectures with an exhaustive level of cultural sensitivity, accuracy, and consideration. 

The Elie Wiesel Living Archive is now available for learners of all ages and backgrounds online at the 92NY website. We consider it a veritable treasure trove of Jewish history, Torah education, cultural education, and, in 92NY’s own words, “an essential guide in ethics, human rights, and memory in the wake of the Holocaust.” We strongly encourage you to take a look. 

ATC Client Spotlight

May 31, 2020
ATC’s Client Spotlight is on the Hatfield Historical Society


As we wrap up the month of May we wanted to share a fascinating oral history project that our client, the Hatfield Historical Society, has just published on their Hatfield Vietnam Stories website. These oral histories capture the untold stories of Hatfield veterans from the Vietnam War. These captivating oral histories are full of memories with raw emotions, and they intertwine their amazing recollections from their lives and experiences during the war.

It was an honor to be a part of this project, and our team was so moved by the veterans’ responses.

These interviews help us better understand not only the experiences of these veterans from the Vietnam War, but the oral histories also give a greater sense of our nation’s history from that era.

7 Digital Recording Devices for Oral History Interviews

7 Digital Recording Devices for Oral History Interviews

In theory, research interviews could be recorded with any device — a phone, a laptop, or even a camcorder. But if you want to save big in the long run, it’s better to invest in a good digital voice recorder. These devices are specifically designed for recording long interviews at high quality, which makes the subsequent transcription process faster and more cost-effective.

Continue reading “7 Digital Recording Devices for Oral History Interviews”

5 Love Stories That Started in the Most Unexpected Ways

Every year, it becomes more and more common to find one’s significant other online, using a dating website or app. So how did single people find their match before the World Wide Web brought us all together? As the song says, “Love comes from the most unexpected places,” and to prove it, five couples tell StoryCorps how their love stories started:

Continue reading “5 Love Stories That Started in the Most Unexpected Ways”

How to Preserve Your Family’s Oral History

How to preserve your family's oral history - Audio Transcription Center Blog

Make all family events unforgettable by interviewing your relatives while they’re all together––you’ll hear amazing stories and gather surprising information that you did not know about them.
Just don’t get caught up in the trap of trying to make it perfect, or you’ll never start. Here are 2 easy ways to preserve your relative’s oral history:

Continue reading “How to Preserve Your Family’s Oral History”

StoryCorps – Eat, Drink, Be Merry, and Record?

Eat drink be merry and record - Audio Transcription Center Blog

Holidays offer a perfect time for family to reminisce, and possibly to pass those rather embarrassing family stories around the holiday table along with helpings of stuffing and mashed potatoes.  This year though, make sure to grab a recording device (digital recorder, iPhone, video camera — there are so many options), ask questions you’ve always wondered about the answers to, and listen to the stories while you have the chance.

Continue reading “StoryCorps – Eat, Drink, Be Merry, and Record?”

StoryCorps’s National Day of Listening

Story Corps National Day of Listening - Audio Transcription Center Blog

Thanksgiving is around the proverbial corner, and this holiday is typically a wonderful opportunity for friends and families to reconnect.  People being together offers a perfect time for stories to be passed around the holiday table along with helpings of stuffing and mashed potatoes. The potential for these stories to be handed and passed from generation to generation is at a peak while everyone is together.  What better way to collect, share, and save these stories from potentially being forgotten than by recording, archiving, and transcribing them for posterity?

We believe that StoryCorps’s The National Day of Listening is the perfect excuse to talk, listen, record, and transcribe.

We live in a special time when we’re not just able to orally pass stories down the line, but we’re also able ensure their archival longevity through the recording and transcribing of these personal and oral histories.

Take the time to find a quiet space, and set up your digital recorder.  Test the device to make sure you are recording properly.  Then, hit the record button and listen to and record the story.  It’s that simple, and it will be a gift  to read and listen to for generations.  This year, StoryCorps suggests honoring a veteran, and offers suggested conversation starters right on their website.

Don’t lose out on your family history and question yourself after it is too late.  We speak from our own missed opportunities.

Wishing you a peaceful Thanksgiving, and the opportunity to listen to, record and transcribe a new story never heard before.

In full disclosure, the Audio Transcription Center has partnered with StoryCorps on transcription of their audio recordings for their published books, Listening is an Act of Love, All There Is, and Mom , that we are humbled and proud to have participated in. 

Michael Sesling                                                           Sandy Poritzky
Director                                                                           Owner/President
michael@audiotranscriptioncenter.com                      sandy@audiotranscriptioncenter.com
(617) 423-2151                                                              (617) 423-2151