First Steps

  Starting my first day this week and getting working on Miriam Breckenridge’s Oral Histories was a smooth transition. I started this week getting comfortable with the histories and technology tools I will be using on the job. I read thoroughly through 9 of the 18 Oral Histories taking notes of anything I felt would make an excellent sound-bite. This process also gave me an extensive background of the Wood River Valley, the people who lived there, and the politics of the time that these people lived in.
   
  These oral histories gave me an amazing look into the past and gave me a feel for the type of people who lived in the valley at this time. Miriam Breckenridge focused many of her histories around the sheep industry, an industry that has almost no place in the modern public eye. I found these histories insightful and I feel that their content should be given more light.

  In order to get an even better feel for the history discussed and in order to gather resources for putting these oral histories on VoiceThread and later Luna, I began sifting through the photo archives. We really have an excellent collection of photos and documentation that made it easy for me to search for items that would be of great use to me.
  
  This Saturday I worked on putting pictures to some sound bytes. I used my notes on the oral histories to find sections that I enjoyed and then I started the lengthy process of editing the lengthy audio recordings down into minute or so long recordings that could associate an online PowerPoint. I used an online program called Audacity. I then searched through my notes to find a quality photo I selected to associate with the sound-bite. I had to reformat the audio recordings to be in the correct format to edit. Finally I uploaded the content to VoiceThread and annotated the selections.
  
  I still need to expand the tags that make these selections easier to find. However, if you go to VoiceThread's main site at VoiceThread.com and click on the browse tab at the top of the page you can search for these media files I have created. If you type in "community library RHD", you should be able to find most all of these files and libraries. I still have a lot more work to do, but I am enjoying it and I am looking forward to next week!