Oral History as Data

Oral History as Data (OHD) is a framework for publishing and analyzing coded oral history and qualitative interview transcripts. Prepare transcripts as CSVs with speaker IDs, thematic tags, and timestamps — OHD transforms them into interactive color-coded visualizations.

Best for:

• Thematic coding and color-coded transcript visualization
• Synchronized audio/video playback with transcripts
• CSV-driven workflow compatible with Google Sheets
• Interactive filtering by theme, speaker, and keyword

Origin

OHD was first built in 2018 at the University of Idaho Library’s Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL). It has since been used for projects ranging from queer history documentation to wilderness research archives to large-scale podcast collections. It was most recently migrated to be fully built on top of CollectionBuilder-CSV.

Example Projects

• OHD Demo — demonstration site with sample interviews
• Voices of Gay Rodeo — documenting LGBTQ+ experiences in western rodeo culture
• Taylor Wilderness Research Station Archives — interviews with wilderness researchers, students, and caretakers
• CTRL+Shift — examining poets’ digital writing practices

Questions? Post on our GitHub Discussion Board or email collectionbuilder.team@gmail.com.