Western Australia

Oral History WA News Bulletin (July 2024)

In the July Bulletin we have news of committee changes, coming Accredited training workshop, and advice on easy voice transcription tools.

2024 AGM Save the Date

Our AGM will be held at the State Library of WA on Sunday 13 October. Please save the date. More details to come in the September bulletin.

Resignation of OHWA President

Unfortunately our President, Susan Hall, has come to the decision that she needs to resign from the OHWA Committee. Susan has been a long-term member of OHWA, and served on the committee for a number of years, before stepping up to be President at last year’s AGM. Her energy and enthusiasm has been instrumental in reinvigorating the organisation with recent introductory training program and a new website.

Dr Alison Atkinson-Phillips has agreed to step into the role of President and will re-nominate at the coming AGM. We invite all members to come along to the AGM in October and to consider
nominating for membership of the Committee. Please email contact@oralhistorywa.org.au for more information about what is involved.

Oral History Training: Accredited

Good news for those who have been waiting to hear about the next Australian Vocational Education Training accredited training opportunity. Dr Elaine Rabbitt from Goolarri Media will be hosting training in Fremantle this coming October.

  • Dates: Thursday 17 & Friday 18 October
  • Time: 10,00am to 4.00pm daily
  • Cost: $395 non-members, $360 members
  • Venue: City of Cockburn Administrative Building, 9 Coleville Crescent, Spearwood

Oral History WA is committed to ensuring oral history interviews are conducted to a high standard, in terms of ethics, protocols and (where possible) audio quality. This is the only accredited oral history training course of its kind, and is highly recommended for anyone interested in learning how to do oral history interviews that are of a high quality and ethical standard. For a registration form email elaine.rabbitt@gme.com.au

OHA Biennial Conference 2024

Contributions are being invited for the peer-reviewed and reports sections of the 2025 issues of Studies in Oral History, the journal of the OHA. Oral history can be powerful in so many ways: interviews generate potent emotions, recordings capture the power of voice as well as the power of silence, and multimedia productions engage and connect new audiences with the complexities of the past. Yet these possibilities come with risk as well as reward – the theme of this edition, as well as the coming national conference.

Submission deadline is 17 January 2025. For more information see the call for papers: https://oralhistoryaustralia.org.au/journal/cfp-no-47-2025.

OHA Biennial Conference 2024

Registrations are now open for the OHA Biennial Conference 2024: The Power of Oral History – Risks, Rewards & Possibilities. This year the event will be hosted by OH Victoria in Melbourne, 21-24 November 2024. Early bird prices are available until the end of August. For more information visit https://oralhistoryaustralia.org.au/biennial-conference-2024/

National Awards – call for applications

Oral History Australia (OHA) is inviting applications for its three awards – the Hazel de Berg Award for Excellence in Oral History and the OHA book and media awards – with recipients to be announced during the Biennial Conference in Melbourne in November 2024.

Nominations and applications for the three awards close on 31 August 2024.

How to apply

Those interested in making a nomination or application for any of the OHA awards should refer to the following information:

Voice-to-Text transcription hacks

Did you know that MS Work now has an option for transcribing audio in the ‘Dictate’ function tab? Our member Cate Pattison has tested it out, and found it works well, discerning between voices and timestamping. More information is available here in a short YouTube video: Transcribe Audio and Video to Text in Microsoft 365 Word for Free! (2023) (youtube.com).

Auto transcription still requires a live human to edit the work and to check for errors, but can be useful for a first draft transcript. For more about auto transcription and other issues about emerging technology and
oral history, you may be interested in this talk by Dr Doug Boyd from the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, hosted at La Trobe University last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOg0iCefZJw

Monthly Oral History Drop-In

Following the monthly OHWA Committee meetings, we invite members and anyone interested in Oral History to join us at the Epoch Café, 12noon-1pm. These monthly drop-in sessions will be a chance to talk about your latest project or idea, get advice about ethical and technical challenges from experienced members – and to generally meet and get to know others who share a passion for oral history.

  • Dates: 2nd Saturday, Monthly
  • Time: 12noon
  • Venue: Epoch Café, WA Museum Boola Bardip

Please made sure you email us to RSVP: contact@oralhistorywa.org.au

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