Recording a testimonial

Submitted by karenb on Sun, 12/02/2007 - 14:09.

The Women's Library use recorded testimonials as part of their interactive exhibition: Sinners, Scroungers and Saints - which showcases new research, challenges common perceptions and tells the stories of lone mothers from the 1800s to the present day.

They say of using recorded testimonials:

It was very important for the women to voice their own experiences and to be heard. You can also hear the things they don’t say in their voices, something you wouldn’t get if you were just reading a transcript. It is more meaningful to listen to women speaking for themselves.

The Women's Library makes an important point when they say:

Recording a voice may not seem to be the flashiest use of technology, but listening to a woman tell her own story is more powerful than reading it.

You don't need flashy, top-of-the range, state-of-the-art tools and technologies to have impact. Content is critical, and no-one tell's a woman's story more powerfully, than the woman herself - and recording women's voices is quite simple, and very cheap, if you have the right information and tools.

How to record a testimonial, interview, story

The Itrainonline resource platform contains a complete section of material on audio production. This includes everything from understanding what a sound file is, to recording sound on your computer or mobile phone, uploading your sound files to the internet, producing podcasts and radio programmes.

One of the resources is paticularly useful as an introduction to sound recording and editing.

The Multi-media training kit module 'Digital Audio Production' contains 4 training units which include overviews, case-studies, exercises and information about software and hardware. The units collectively cover:

  • Understanding sound files
  • What software and hardware you need to be able to hear/listen to sound, and create audio files
  • What software you need to edit audio files and convert them into other formats
  • A step by step guide to creating audio files using two popular, free and open source sound editors:
    • Cooledit
    • Soundforge

Adding sound files to your website

Adding sound files to your website is easy, and having sound files on your website allows any site visitor to listen to your story, testimonial, or interview.

It is very simple to add a sound file to your website, or blog, or other online space.

The file must be on the server where your site, or blog is hosted. You need to upload the sound file as you would any new file for your website. Then, you would create a link to the sound-file in your webpage.

All web publishing tools allow you to do this by dragging and dropping files, and inserting the correct HTML code by pointing and clicking on certain icons.

Digitising women's oral history:

A google search with the phrase: "Women's oral history" brings up several results with links to sites which host text or audio files of women's stories.

As more and more of the world's population access information online, the more important it is to ensure that women's stories, their oral histories, are digitised and form part of the global public domain of knowledge.

The Center for the Study of Women and Society in New York, maintains a collection of women's oral histories - including information about women's oral history projects that are not available online.

The Although no women focussed, the Kings Cross Voices Oral History Project is an interesting project that has been working with community members and local partners to record people's memories and unique life experiences of the King's Cross area.