For my dissertation research, I’m studying oral history practice, with the goal of building pervasive computing technologies to support oral history practice. I’m beginning my research with fieldwork with the UC Berkeley Regional Oral History Office: working as an oral historian, studying oral history producers, and studying the users of oral histories. My initial fieldwork has shown that oral historians would like the oral artifact to be more accessible; currently only the books are used. The first technology we are building addresses this issue by creating an augmented transcript book: a physical transcript book tagged at the paragraph level with printed barcodes. This book will be tagged such that a PDA with a wireless network and barcode reader will be able to display the audio/video interview artifact at the correlated location. A better understanding of oral history practice with an eye to how technology could help (section 3). After creating this augmented book, we will work with current users of the ROHO archives, providing them with the histories they are currently using in this augmented format. We will evaluate the technology in these real use practices.
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