Preservation Archives

Client Spotlight, Oral History, Transcription

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.

Client Spotlight, Oral History, Transcription

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.

Client Spotlight, Transcription

Client Spotlight – July 2020

Since our founding in 1966, oral history interviews and archival recordings have been a main focus of our transcription service. Each time we partner with an organization it is always amazing to learn the ins and outs of each project. It is with great pleasure that we share these two fascinating projects that we proudly transcribed.

Lynda Kachurek, Head of Rare Books & Special Collections at the Boatwright Memorial Library at the University of Richmond shared these comments with us about two of her projects.

This two-part oral history with Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker and his wife, Theresa Ann Edwards Walker, was conducted by the University of Richmond in 2016 and is believed to be the last interview Dr. Walker recorded before his passing in 2018. The excellent transcription completed by the Audio Transcription Center assists with accessibility online, as well as allowing greater subject analysis and research access for the material.

The Birmingham Tapes are a set of 10 mass meetings that span the duration of Project C, the SCLC’s (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) work during the 1963 Birmingham Campaign. They are believed to be the only publicly available recordings of these meetings, presenting a significant and unique perspective on the detailed planning and management of the Birmingham Campaign. The transcriptions done by the Audio Transcription Center not only assist with accessibility but they allow for a deeper research potential, greater subject analysis, and wider availability to these materials.

Client Spotlight, Oral History

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.

Oral History, Tips & Tricks

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.

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Client Spotlight, Oral History

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:

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FAQ, Tips & Tricks

5 Affordable Voice Recording Devices

Whether you need transcripts for lectures, conversations, dictations for articles or books, or just your own personal thoughts, nothing is more convenient than a portable recording device. In today’s plugged-in world, make sure your recorder has a USB port or an external memory card slot so the audio file can be easily exported and shared with your transcription provider. With that in mind, here are 5 affordable voice recording devices available for purchase on Amazon.

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