ANNOTATING

AUDIO
ORAL HISTORIES
INFORMATION BOOKLET

Peter Ralley January 2016

Annotating Audio Interviews

The objective of annotating audio oral history interviews is to ensure that we know what has
been said and when during the interview it has been said. This means we can then access the
information quickly and easily.

Please make sure that you do not under annotate by making general
statements about a long length of interview e.g. talks about trips to the canal.
We need to know specific stories and points of interest so this would need to
be broken down into more detail.
This is a suggested way of tackling annotation:
1. Play the audio clip on a PC or laptop as you can play it with Windows Media Player, VLC or
through Audacity in each case you will see a time code on the screen.
2. Set up your annotation sheet by filling in your name date etc. (see over).
3. Play the audio file and when an interesting fact is mentioned make a note of the
time code and a brief note of what is said.
4. You do not have to write down what is said word for word.
5. You may need to stop the film (usually by pressing the space bar) to make your notes,
however, if the subject is talking for a while about the same thing you can keep it running.
6. There is no need to write down the questions the interviewer is asking or anything that is
not connected with the main topics.
7. You will get faster at this skill as you go along, take your time and if necessary do it in small
sections of 15 minutes a time.

Annotation Examples
Annotated by:
Date Annotated:
Interviewer:
Interviewee:

Peter Ralley
February 12th 2012
Graham Sellors
Daisy Williams

Lacking in detail

Session/Time
code

Dialogue

00:32
14:55
23:46

Talks about teachers in school

Talks about shops in village
Stories about village hall

Good annotation

Session/Time
code

Dialogue

00:32
00:55

Mr McKnight used to test ice to play on

Miss Constable use to walk us down to Methodist Hall
for dinners
Remember having day off for Coronation
Used to stand outside to look for German bombers
Boys did woodwork girls did cookery

01:27
14:55
17:31