My work in record keeping led to my involvement in the OHLA (Oral History and the Liberal Arts), a project headed by Dr. Brooke Bryan, which catalogs and keeps interviews conducted by both students and faculty alike – to give a basic explanation. It has cataloged and stored dozens of interviews and logged quite a few hours of video and audio. The page also offers trainings as well as resources to learn and teach. In support of their support, the site showcases the digital projects from the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Global Liberal Arts Alliance. I can explain no better then your eyes can see, so please go visit the extensive library at https://ohla.info/.
There you can also see my handy work, as I was charged with the task of strategically auditing the issues of the site. You see, when a database has logged that much information, it is bound to have racked up some years in the process. Some of the interview videos did not play, transcripts were formatted wrong or missing, and links did not match up to where they said they’d go.
Student Project Audit
Each of these issues had a method of solving that I had to work closely with Dr. Bryan to find and apply. The work day was usually spent tackling the issues at hand, but seeing them get changed to functional in the audit was very reassuring. When I saw the site fixed and the interviews functioning I was very proud of my help in making sure the stories of the individuals in the interviews could be shared with the world clearly and legibly.
Faculty Issue Audit
It is a mission of Dr. Bryan and her associates to preserve and log these interviews, the chunks of life people are willing to share and contemplate, the projects and frontiers that they are pioneering for the betterment of the common individual. These things remain intact, but the frame work they are told through degrades, becomes outdated, breaks, and I’m glad that I was able to maintain and upkeep the grand lives that they lead. Work like this gives me a new perspective and refreshes my interest in my field of Linguistic Anthropology and the deep ties of language and individual, so please enjoy my work and more at the OHLA site! Engage, learn, and grow with that great community of researchers!
