UCLA Library

The paper reports on transcription as a means to increase usability and access to specialized audio collections in the library. We discuss the complexity of transcriptions as a both a political and linguistic process rather than a neutral one. Two audiovisual collections are discussed: The Older Recordings of Belizean varieties of Spanish (Fuller Medina 2018) and the Chinese-Cuban oral histories (UCLA library’s International Digital Ephemera project). The first collection consists of sociolinguistic interviews collected by Timothy W. Hagerty in Belizean Mestizo-Maya communities for his linguistic analysis of the Spanish of Belize in 1979. More than a linguistic benchmark, however, these interviews document a disappearing cultural heritage and are therefore reimagined as cultural patrimony. Thus, rather than giving primary consideration to linguists as is traditionally done in the creation of linguistic corpora, the goals of specialist researchers are balanced with those of repatriation and the creation of a public resource that it is both meaningful and accessible to local communities. The Chinese-Cuban oral histories are a born-digital collection destined to be part of the IDEP open access online collection and ultimately shared with the interviewees and Casa de Artes y Tradiciones Chinas in Cuba. While both these important audio collections document voices largely absent from library and archival collections, the transcription workflows differ based on both the nature of the recordings and intended users. Through these case studies we present some of the major issues to consider in developing best practices for the transcription of audiovisual collections.