Text > DATA: Mining Oral Histories for Multiple Audiences

Millions of dollars have been spent on digitizing oral histories, preserving records of otherwise undocumented lives and experiences. But a list of digital audio files and transcripts can seem impenetrable and intimidating to all but the most intrepid scholars. If part of the mission of these projects is to make histories accessible to the public and produce fresh understandings of our past, digitization is not enough. How might computational tools be applied to organizing and presenting these histories in new ways, making them easier to comprehend and connect? Ryan Shaw is an assistant professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on how events and periods are used as conceptual structures for digitally organizing narrative information across different types of media, and how information systems might better support the expression of multiple perspectives on events and their relationships. Please click "More Information" and register to attend.