Project Name: TBD, Gettysburg College Oral Histories, 1978
By Emma Lewis
This project utilizes audio from Oral Histories conducted by 1978 Gettysburg College class to provide interpretation for users. The interviews are concerned with the college in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and interview people who attended, taught, worked, or were otherwise connected with the college at the time.
This project seeks to provide its audience with context surrounding the ideas talked about in the interviews and inform them about the tradition of Oral History at Gettysburg College. It will have a few broad topics, such as the Great Depression, college traditions, and women on campus, but will use smaller and more personal stories to connect these broad ideas to the audience.
It will consist of videos using the audio and media from the time to create interpretation, as well as textual interpretation for context. It will also provide links for further reading about certain topics, class reading used by the students in 1978, and other Oral Histories conducted at Gettysburg College.
The main purpose of this project is to connect the words of the Oral Histories to pictures, films, and other media in order to provide visual context to aid in a general audience’s understanding of the Oral Histories.
Deliverables:
This project will need fairly few deliverables. The main thing I need to produce is video interpretation utilizing audio clips. I will gather media to use in videos and write scripts. I will also need to ensure that each interview has a transcript for use on the site.
I will use Scalar as my platform, so I will need to ensure that my pathways and connections make sense. This can be done in my wire frame, which will be completed by next week.
Timeline:
Week 1- June 4-8: Sort through the oral histories, find common topics.
Week 2- June 11-15: Read research books and refine topics.
Week 3- June 18-22: Choose topics and audio clips. Learn video editing tools and gather media. Finish wire frame.
Week 4- June 25-29: Write scripts and connect media to audio clips.
Week 5- July 2-6: Build media for the site.
Week 6- July 9-10: Finalize choices, finish building what is immediately necessary.
Week 7- July 16-20: Get it on the site. Check for issues.
Week 8- July 23-27: Refine the project, prepare for presentations.
Future Plans:
This project or a form of it can have a long life. More interpretation can be done with the interviews from the 1978 class. I am only using 10 interviews for the purposes of this summer, as I cannot analyze and interpret everything in 8 weeks. The idea can also be adapted to other Oral Histories on campus. There are many sources to draw from, new stories to be told, and other archived media to use as context. This style of project can augment existing Oral Histories. If I have the opportunity to continue work, I will gladly do so. This project has been exciting thus far.
I’m looking forward to learning more about the 1920s-40s through your research, Emma. Former DSSFs have covered the 1950s and later. I am especially excited about learning more about women students from that time period.