For my internship project with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the plan was for me to create a digital package based on last summer’s lecture series from the Folklife Festival’s Voices of The  Indigenous Americas. There were a total of eighteen panel discussions revolving around specific topics, including talks about Indigenous Sovereignty, Indigenous Art, Indigenous Sports, Native Americans in the military, and more. All of the sessions were orally recorded, so there are audio recordings, plus accompanying rough draft written documents of most of the sessions. 

 For my task, the first step was to take an audio recording and create a written transcription that included time stamps of comments by each of the speakers who participated in a particular topic.  This written transcript would be posted on the Center’s website, along with the original audio recording, a picture of the participants from the festival, and a brief summary and quote that would capture the essence of the talk. 

Apparently, this was a new digital project for the CFCH, which means there are learning curves in its application. Skills and knowledge from my coursework with George Mason’s Certification in Digital Public Humanities would, I believe, include working on the creation of a total digital package of an individual session from the Folklife Festival. There has been a plan for me to learn how the Digital Application Management System (DAMS) works, but due to scheduling conflicts we are still trying to make that work. I am still eager to be shown this process, hopefully in the next week or so. Part of learning how DAMS works includes the process of selecting a corresponding picture to go along with the written, time stamped audio transcription and the original audio file in the digital package. 

However, editing the transcriptions has been a far more time consuming task than I believe we realized. The skills needed in this process are not necessarily the skills and knowledge we covered in coursework from the certification program. The editing process for the written transcriptions has involved intense listening, checking for correct spelling, and making sure to divide the segments into 30 to 60 second time stamped segments. I do believe if the editing process was not as time intensive, there could be more time for learning the process of putting it all together by using the skills and knowledge I learned in the certification program.

Therefore, I don’t believe I can accurately answer the questions of what skills and knowledge I am using from our certification coursework in this internship program, but I am looking forward to learning about how the Digital Access Management System works.