{"id":2167,"date":"2019-09-18T12:46:33","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T12:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/?p=2167"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:22:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:22:02","slug":"catalogues-websites-digital-tables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/2019\/09\/18\/catalogues-websites-digital-tables\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalogues, Websites & Digital Tables"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nidhi presenting in front of the large screen<\/p><\/div>\n

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In the summer of 2019 the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) project has hosted two Museums Studies work placement students, Feifei Qin and Nidhi Saryal, who have been learning different aspects of working with sound archives.<\/p>\n

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Nidhi started by processing sound collections that we have brought in from Worcestershire and Derbyshire. These are mostly oral history recordings and each tape had to be numbered and sorted in preparation for cataloguing. Where one interview runs over more than one tape, these had to be grouped together. Nidhi also had a go at summarising some of the recordings and was shown how to enter the information onto the spreadsheets we use to send the information to the British Library. Eventually, like all out cataloguing volunteers, Nidhi will be able to look at entries on the online British Library catalogue and say, \u2018I did that!\u2019<\/p>\n

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The second stage was to show Nidhi how to use sound clips in a web exhibition. The process of filtering and selecting a large amount of photographic, documentary and audio material, writing text, and assembling it all onto the webpage is time consuming, but Nidhi did an admirable job in a short amount of time. Many of the photos she used came from a project run by the British Council in 1945 and you can read about these here – https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/2019\/05\/01\/leicester-in-1945-the-british-council-harold-white\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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To edit the sound clips Nidhi used Audacity software – https:\/\/www.audacityteam.org\/<\/a> – which is available for free and easy to use. The process of creating sound clips involves reading summaries of oral history recordings, choosing relevant extracts, finding them in the original recordings and then editing them down to a short extract.<\/p>\n

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Nidhi and webpage on the large screen<\/p><\/div>\n

The software used for the web exhibition is called Omeka – https:\/\/www.omeka.net\/<\/a> – and it requires each photo, document or audio clip to be entered onto the system individually. The webpage can then be built from the uploaded items. The result is a page about work and industry that uses text, photos, advertisements, audio clips and an embedded video to tell the story of industry in post-war Leicester. You can see this here – https:\/\/leicester.omeka.net\/exhibits\/show\/postwar\/working<\/a><\/p>\n

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Nidhi adds, ‘Learning and patience are a must and are basic steps for the Archivist and the museologist to produce and create an exhibition, or to handle archival or object-oriented\u00a0collections in order to document, preserve or conserve them. I have learned all these things during my internship placement on the project ‘Unlocking\u00a0Our Sound Heritage’. During this placement, I handled unique sound archives from BBC Radio Leicester, Derbyshire Archives, and Worcestershire Archives, as well as documenting and scanning slides from the early days of Radio Leicester, which was the first BBC regional radio station in 1967. These slides are going to be added to the East Midland Oral History Archive (and they nicely complement the Radio Leicester broadcasts that have been digitised for the UOSH project).<\/p>\n

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‘Experiencing the rich heritage of British history through the sound archive and using this collection for the web exhibition was not only challenging but unique too. The whole process of shelf-marking, grouping, creating track-sheets,\u00a0 two stages of cataloguing (first stage – Collection entries and Product entries, second stage – Record entries), were part of my first assignment, while the second assignment consisted of learning and working with different \u00a0software\u00a0like Audacity, Photoshop, Omeka, and then selecting entries for designing the web exhibition. During the process of making the web exhibition, decision making was one of the most important tasks – what needs to be included and what should not be included for the exhibition.\u00a0Under the guidelines\u00a0of my supervisor Colin Hyde, I successfully designed the web exhibition Working Lives and Industry in Leicester 1945-1962.’<\/p>\n

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Feifei took another approach to using sound. The University of Leicester library has a large digital table with projector that uses Intuiface software \u00a0– https:\/\/www.intuiface.com\/<\/a> – to create interactive displays that can be manipulated by touching the screen. Up to this point, none of the displays on the table had used audio or video and our challenge to Feifei was to create a display that used sound. Feifei decided to create a sound map of Leicester.<\/p>\n

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Feifei presenting in front of the large screen<\/p><\/div>\n

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For a novice, Intuiface is challenging software to get to grips with and it was a huge help that Feifei\u2019s first degree was in IT! She taught herself how to use the software, designed the look of the display, sourced existing sounds for the locations on the map and recorded new sounds where necessary. As an added bonus, we realised a high resolution scan of an 1828 map of Leicester looked great on the screen, so she added some contemporary drawings and recent photos of Leicester to the map to illustrate how places have changed. The only sound used for this was a background chorus of birdsong, which we shall now miss hearing in the office as Feifei tests the pages. Feifei also used Audacity software to create the sound clips.<\/p>\n

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Feifei adds, ‘For me, after 8 weeks\u00a0working with\u00a0the project of Leicester Sound map,\u00a0I think the most useful method to teach yourself is doing some research about your work as soon as possible, and\u00a0trying to recall all the\u00a0relevant\u00a0things you have learnt before, like\u00a0Museum Studies\u2019\u00a0courses,\u00a0and some digital experiences, and combining them. It is\u00a0really a good opportunity to put those theories into practices, do not miss\u00a0it.\u00a0Intuiface\u00a0is a great software that can be used at every touching machine. It is simple to begin with it, but if the editor would like to do more cool-looking works,\u00a0like making the whole page vivid like\u00a0a\u00a0website, you need to spend more time to explore.\u00a0Learning from examples on the\u00a0Intuiface\u2019s\u00a0official website\u00a0is\u00a0a\u00a0very efficient method\u00a0to check your\u00a0work. The examples they support\u00a0include more professional code, which could be\u00a0compared\u00a0with\u00a0yours and give you a good\u00a0guideline.<\/p>\n

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The digital table in the library at the University of Leicester<\/p><\/div>\n

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‘Design Thinking<\/em> is a miraculous\u00a0theory that you probably would know from Museum Studies\u2019 Specialism courses. This theory\u00a0is famous for not only the field of museums but also the field of computing. Thus, know what it\u00a0refers to\u00a0and\u00a0set it into your project.\u00a0Do not forget to keep your patience and smile all the\u00a0time and\u00a0enjoy all the process!’<\/p>\n

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By the end of the summer both Feifei and Nidhi had created and curated sound recordings for the first time. They have produced two different examples of how sound can be used: as part of a multimedia web exhibition and as part of an interactive digital display. There are many other ways sound can be used and we are always open to volunteers who would like to learn how to use our sound collections and have a go at creating something to add to the achievements of Feifei, Nidhi and our other UOSH volunteers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  In the summer of 2019 the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) project has hosted two Museums Studies work placement students, Feifei Qin and Nidhi Saryal, who have been learning different aspects of working with sound archives.   Nidhi started by processing sound collections that we have brought in from Worcestershire and Derbyshire. These are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unlocking-our-sound-heritage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2167"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2182,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions\/2182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}