Contents: What to Expect | Metadata | Audiovisual Materials | Please Note | Contact | Accessibility| Tech

What to Expect

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The site provides multiple avenues for exploring the digitized resources:

• A search page providing multiple search options of the resources’ text and descriptions.
• Item page for browsing resources
• Word clouds of the subjects and locations
• A timeline (note: undated resources are not included)
• Data page containing brief descriptions (metadata) of each resource

Metadata

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Metadata is the information that describes the items in this portal—such as titles, creators, dates, subjects, places, and rights. It helps you search, browse, and understand materials from many institutions in one shared space.

Metadata can help you

• Find items by topic, place, person, or time period
• Discover related materials across institutions
• Understand historical context

This project (ABVI) uses metadata created by contributing partners. Iowa State University developed shared metadata guidelines for the project, which partners were encouraged to follow. These guidelines support consistency while allowing institutions to retain their own descriptive practices. Guided by the project’s Advisory Board, metadata creators use a “supplement rather than replace” approach to subject terms. When historically used or potentially harmful terms are relevant to an item, they are included alongside preferred terms. This reflects the language found in historical sources while also improving searchability and honoring the variety of terms people use today.

Subjects

When they apply (most do), all resources will contain both subject headings “Black People” and “African Americans”. This was on the recommendation of the grant’s Advisory Board.

Audiovisual materials

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The site includes a variety of audiovisual materials through the Library’s Aviary platform. These features are outlined below, including decisions related to the type of transcription and caption style used.

Captions and Transcriptions

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The transcription vendor (3Play Media) used by the project offers two major transcription styles: Clean Read and Full Verbatim. Clean Read is their most commonly used style and aims to provide transcripts “as close to the true audio as possible while adhering to standard writing mechanics and grammar.” A Clean Read transcript contains the entire conversation including digressions, sound effects, and the speaker’s exact words with standard spelling. It omits filler words and false starts that don’t add to the content. A Full Verbatim transcription is used less frequently and captures “each word exactly as spoken, with no editing for clarity.” It includes “false starts, stammers, interjections, and filler words like um and uh.”

After giving consideration to both options and our materials, we opted for Clean Read. Our goals for the transcripts were to retain speakers’ manner of speech, dialect, and accent as faithfully as possible without stereotyping or demeaning any cultural group. While Clean Read guidelines change some words to standard spelling, they also provide guidance that seems intended to honor dialects, accents, and regional terms without stereotyping or othering.

We consulted style guides from cultural heritage institutions at historically Black colleges and universities, which suggested that keeping filler words and false starts in transcripts of interviews with people of color can appear disrespectful and reinforce stereotypes, especially when they are removed from other transcripts. Given the nature and content of our audiovisual material, we concluded that Clean Read would provide the most readable transcript, retaining the manner of speech of the individuals recorded.

Audio Descriptions

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In addition to captions and transcription, films will contain a version of the film which includes audio descriptions of the visual content. The audio descriptions will be in addition to the film’s original audio content. Users can choose between the original film, and the version including audio descriptions.

Please Note

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The resources within this portal represent the voices of Black people from Iowa. The project had a ten member Advisory Board which advised on the project, including the use of problematic terms. They advocated to include them. As with the metadata noted earlier on this page, when historically used or potentially harmful terms are within an item, the terms are included. This reflects the language found in historical sources while also improving discovery of these items.

Contact

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For questions or inquiries please use our Contact Form