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Contributing Oral Histories to the Tacoma Community History Project: Digital Format Requirements

This guide was created for college course outside of the UW Tacoma that create assignments that will contribute an oral history to the Tacoma Community History Project. If you have questions or are developing a class that would like to contribute oral his

Text Documents (i.e. research essay, transcripts, etc.)

Format:

  • Save the document in Rich Text Format (.rtf).

If using Microsoft Word, this is one of the formats that the document can be saved in.

    Naming convention:

    • [student_last_name]_contents.rtf
    • [student_last_name]_essay.rtf
    • [student_last_name]_bibliography.rtf
    • [interviewee_last_name]_transcript[number].rtf

    Examples:

    • jones_essay.rtf
    • smith_transcript1revised.rtf
    • smith_transcript1original.rtf

    If two or more interviewees have the same last name, differentiate files using first initials.  If multiple transcripts exist, use numbers to differentiate them.  If providing both the original and revised transcripts, please designate them with "revised" or "original" as appropriate.

    Notes:

    • These requirements only apply to the original materials created for the Community History Project.  You do not need to make digital versions of the any of the materials that appear in Appendices, such as copies of newspaper and journal articles, archival documents, etc.
    • The templates for projects are already in Rich Text Format, so there is no need to convert them.

    Audio Recordings of Interviews

    Format:

    • Please provide the recordings in WAV (.wav) exported with the following settings: 44.1 kHz, 16 bit PCM.

    Naming convention:

    • [interviewee_last_name]recording[number].wav

    Examples:

    • smithrecording1.wav
    • smithrecording2.wav

    Differentiate recordings by putting a number after each one.

      Note:

      • Olympus Digital Voice Recorders can be checked out from Media Services.  These recorders record audio in Windows Media Video (.wmv) format.  You will need to down load the file and convert it to the appropriate format.  You can do this at home by following these steps or you can get help doing this from Justin Wadland.

      Images (such as a portrait of interviewees or other images relevant to project)

      Format:

      • Please provide all images in high-resolution JPEG (.jpg) format.  If you include a portrait, please provide a jpeg (.jpg) image at least 3000 pixels on the long side.  If a photograph taken with digital camera, please provide the largest size at the default resolution.  Please scan at 400 ppi, 24 bit (color).


      Naming convention:

      • [interviewee_last_name]portrait.jpg
      • There is no naming convention for other images.

      Note:

      • Portraits of interviewees are not required by highly recommended and appreciated.