Half Day

I was only in for a half day today but I did add some more content to Julian Newman's selection. Check it out on VoiceThread.com. Much more to do tomorrow!

Thanks!

The Julian Newman Epic

The oral history for Julian Newman is huge! It spans four disks and is at least 4 hours long! I'm just finishing the first disk today, so I should be able to finish his section up sometime next week. He selection on VoiceThread.com is definitely going to be the largest section we will upload until we figure out how we are going to upload the entire oral history to our archives.

I am really happy with the audio quality and the crisp voices that narrate this oral history. I think this section is going to be the best one thus far! Here is another photo for today that shows another section of Sun Valley Road in 1910:

Thanks for checking in! See you all Tuesday at 5-6 PM PST.

Media Management

Today was a big day for managing the data this project has accumulated thus far. I started today off by copying some disks as part of a side project for the department. Then I decided it was about time to go through all of the uploads on VoiceThread to check for any errors or problems with any of the media files uploaded so far. Comment if you see an issue that I should address. After that I started working on Julian Newman's oral histories. There are four disks so it may take quite a while to get through everything. Keep checking back and I should have something for you next week.

Our Regional History Librarian is home sick today and will hopefully be back either tomorrow or sometime next week. She just started a few new prescriptions to help her recover from her surgery.

Here is your weekly photo to enjoy:

See you all tomorrow!

A New Section Featuring Clyde Bacon

There is a new section up on VoiceThread.com featuring Clyde Bacon! What is available currently is the around a third of his entire oral history (still a section of decent size). The rest of his oral history with Miriam Breckenridge was transferred poorly and the quality is not high enough to justify uploading on VoiceThread. It will get re-transferred and edited in the future to be uploaded in its entirety with the rest of our processed oral history archive.

This issue with the poor transfer was my troubleshooting difficulty of the day. When I opened up the audio file the audio levels were at a very low decibel, so I boosted the audio to match the other disks we have in our selection. When I went back through to check that there were no distortions in the boost, I noticed that the audio levels were bouncing, fading, and picking up a lot of noise disruptions. I messed with the file for an hour or so and determined that the files were not going to reach the quality of the other sound files.

Here is another daily picture for your enjoyment:

I am really happy of how this picture turned out! When I first looked at this picture it had big tears and holes in the middle of the picture and bordering the frame. After an hour or so of editing colors and masking damaged areas, I was able to produce this nicely restored picture.

See you all tomorrow!

Robert Elliott and Wool Production

I uploaded a new section to VoiceThread.com today featuring Robert Elliott. Robert Elliott got involved with wool production in the 1950s after serving in the war. He learned how to get pretty good at his work and it is great to hear him talk about his trade. He has some great stories so check him out asap if you want some cheap entertainment! Hey, you might even learn something about your history and/or heritage.

Today was pretty quiet in the Regional History Department. However, I do work in the corner with headphones on... Here's another photo for today:

See you all tomorrow!

Rink Williams' Oral History

Today was a very productive first day of the week for me. I got Rink Williams' section online on VoiceThread.com today. Rink was in the sheep business starting in the 1950s and when he was interviewed by Miriam Breckenridge in the late 1970s he had a very good handle of the business. He has an interesting perspective on the business and politics of the early Wood River Valley.

Starting today and continuing tomorrow I will be working on Robert and Carol Elliott's oral history with Miriam. I'll keep everyone posted through Twitter, Facebook, and here on the blog. Here is another photo for today. Sorry I wasn't able to post one yesterday due to time constraints.

I run into all sorts of audio problems everyday when I am working with these oral histories. I had a problem today with the Elliott's stereo recording where the stereo would fade in and out. Stereo has two audio tracks, one for the left speaker and one for the right speaker. The issue had the right and left speaker fading out interchangeably. This is a very difficult issue to fix because just combining the two tracks into one and splitting that track into two duplicated tracks just makes both the speakers fade out half as much. I'm going to have to research this issue further.

The other audio problem I have been having off and on is a problem with audio that has the ghost of an audio track over the top of it. I'm not sure if this was a technical issue with the recording equipment or an issue when the recording was moved to the CDs that we have in our collection. In any case, this issue needs to be carefully edited around and sometimes there is just nothing that I can do to save the intended audio track and sections just have to be avoided.

Thanks for stopping in today. Have a great week and keep checking in daily.

VoiceThread is back up

Rink Williams' oral history is a difficult one to progress through but you should be able to enjoy it sometime next week. VoiceThread is back online although we aren't totally sure what happened to make it go down. It still shouldn't be an issue. I worked a short day today and will have much more to post next week. Have a good weekend and see you all on Tuesday!

Victor Otazua an early resident (VoiceThread is down)

Victor Otazua is up on voice thread after some refinement this morning. Victor was a Basque who worked for the Breckenridge family after immigrating to the United States in the 1950s. He took many trips home to visit his family and originally planned on returning to his homeland with enough money to get started again. Because of his unique background, Victor is a very interesting character to learn about and he is fun to listen to because of his unusual accent.

The next oral history is of Rink Williams and, because of its length and his slower speech mannerisms, editing his interview may take a bit longer than other histories I have done thus far. In the first section of his story I was able to grab a sound-bite of Miriam Breckenridge talking about why she composed these histories. If you are interested, check it out.

Thanks for checking in again to see how the project is going. Here is another retouched photo...., however, I'm going to need to edit some more photos before I run out!! It may be a while before you hear much from Rink Williams.

In other news, VoiceThread.com is down temporarily today. It should be back up sometime soon. They have a log on the site updating users on current events. Keep posted and we'll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

Back from a leave of work

Hello everyone!

I'm back from my week of working for Allen & Company. It was a very rewarding experience and I made some new friends and industry connections for future positions. I was able to impress most of the people I worked with and I should be able to get a letter of recommendation or two in the future. I worked 89 hours in 7 days and needed a day or two before I was ready to come back to work at the library. Hopefully there will be no more interruptions in my work schedule until August when I finish up the 300 hours of my contract with the library.

Today the Breckenridge sisters (Carolyn Gregg and Mims Breckenridge) came in to look at my progress on the project. I showed both of them what I have done so far on the project, Aaron talked to them about future possibilities of expanding our local archive to interact with more people, and Sandra gave the reasons for why we made the decisions that we did on the project and gave some great supporting statements. Altogether it was a very successful meeting and I think everyone came away with something positive. I am very grateful that they gave me this amazing opportunity to work on the project and if you are reading this, Thank You!

I worked a lot on Victor Otazua today but I still need to refine a couple sections before I can make the collection of sound-clips and pictures public. Everyone can check it out tomorrow.

Great to be back and working. Here's another retouched image from the Breckenridge collection:

See you all tomorrow!

The Welcome Addition of Dennis Burks

Working in the Regional History Department at the Community Library is always rewarding because, as a researcher, I come across new ideas every day. Today, for instance, I was going through an oral history by Miriam Breckenridge, featuring Dennis Burks, really cleared up a lot of questions that I had about shipping sheep in Idaho's early days. He also shines light on several other sheep related topics I hadn't thought much about at all. It's really interesting to see his perspective because he was in the sheep business for so long and knows so much about its history.

I really suggest that anyone who is even slightly curious about the sheep industry's history check out Dennis Burks's new section on VoiceThread.com! He is great at telling some cool anecdotes from the times! I might be calibrating a very expensive printer tomorrow so I might be unable to upload a new section on VoiceThread tomorrow. In any case, here is the retouched picture for today:

See you all tomorrow!

Elizabeth Peavey

I have completed the Myrle Robertson Bradshaw oral histories and now I have uploaded several sound-bites from Miriam Breckenridge's oral history featuring Elizabeth Peavey. Although Elizabeth Peavey was a Twin Falls resident, she still visited the Wood River Valley during its early years. Her perspective of the valley is a unique and interesting one that I enjoyed re-living through her stories and descriptions.

I'm not going to be blogging tomorrow because it's the 4th of July. However, I'll be back on my mission Thursday or Friday depending on family plans this week (my uncle is back from Russia for the month). Feel free to comment while I'm gone and I'll be back to answer any questions late this week.

Here's the newly retouched photo of the day and have a Happy 4th everyone!