Stories Matter: Conceptual Challenges in the Development of Oral History Database Building Software

Erin Jessee; Stacey Zembrzycki; Steven High

doi:10.17169/fqs-12.1.1465

Erin Jessee Simon Fraser University
Stacey Zembrzycki Concordia University
Steven High Concordia University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-12.1.1465

Keywords: Stories Matter, database building software, computing, oral history, orality, narrative, video-indexing

Abstract

Stories Matter is new oral history database building software designed by an interdisciplinary team of oral historians and a software engineer affiliated with the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It encourages a shift away from transcription, enabling oral historians to continue to interact with their interviews in an efficient manner without compromising the greater life history context of their interviewees. This article addresses some of the conceptual challenges that arose when developing this software. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs110119

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Author Biographies

Erin Jessee, Simon Fraser University

Erin JESSEE is a Fonds québécois de recherche sur la societé et culture postdoctoral fellow in the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University. She continues to collaborate on the development of Stories Matter at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, though her primary research examines the long-term impact of genocidal symbolic violence on communities in Rwanda and Bosnia-Hercegovina in the aftermath of atrocity crimes.

Stacey Zembrzycki, Concordia University

Stacey ZEMBRZYCKI is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow in the History Department at Concordia University where she is also affiliated with the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. Her current research uses life story oral history interviews to understand the educational activism of Holocaust survivors in Montreal, Canada.

Steven High, Concordia University

Steven HIGH is Canada Research Chair in Public History at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is also Co-Director of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (http://storytelling.concordia.ca/) and lead researcher for the Montreal Life Stories project (http://www.lifestoriesmontreal.ca/).