Transcription and Data Collection - SOSF Projects

From April through June of 2020, I was tasked with transcribing interviews between Lourdes students and the Lourdes Sisters of St. Francis. Students in english composition classes are assigned to a living Sister to interview. Questions about where the Sister grew up, why they chose to be a Sister, as well as other inquiries are asked and documented both on paper and through audio recording. The students then had to log on to the English department's Omeka website to enter the information from the interviews and upload the audio or video recordings. It was my job to go through the interviews and transcribe the recordings.

To make transcribing easier, I downloaded the InqScribe program. This program allows its users to upload audio and allow the user to slow it down so they can type simultaneously. The interviews I transcribed lasted anywhere between fifteen minutes and an hour and a half, and transcribing took anywhere from half an hour to four hours. It requires patience, quick typing, and plenty of rewinding. The picture below is a screenshot of the program. The left side consists of the play, stop, and pause button. It also provides a slider to adjust how quickly the audio is played so it can be slowed down for typing. The right side consists of snippets. These are hotkeys I assigned so I wouldn't have to stop typing and click on the screen when another person started to talk. Once I finished transcribing, I pasted the transcription into the correct data field on the Omeka site and published it. The other information found on the Omeka site were collected and posted by other students. The only interview I performed and recorded (but did not transcribe) was with Sr. Marie Andree Chorzempa.