Paper Three: Summary

In “Voice, Ear and Text: Words, meaning, and transcription,” Francis Good follows the ongoing transcription debate amongst oral historians. His article will be examined in conjunction with my experiences as Oral History Project Intern as Buckhead Heritage Society. The problems that Buckhead Heritage has faced with transcription are problems that undoubtedly affect other similar projects and organizations. Without the creation of free audio transcription software, transcription will remain a large part of any small oral history project.

In an ideal oral history project, the text and the audio would be symbiotic. Good believes the “optimistic assessment of how soon a computer will be able to transcribe the human noises we call communication” (371). The technology exists, but at the moment, it is only available to organizations with substantial budgets. I hope that a time in the future exists when such technology will be available as freeware to small organizations, so that oral history can reach its ideal place: a symbiosis between audio and text.