Making Audio Archives a Part of the Web

The problem: Unsearchable, inaccessible audio.

Today thousands of libraries and public media organizations publish large digital audio collections online. Most of these, however, lack transcripts or basic metadata, leaving them invisible to search engines and inaccessible to prospective users. Transcripts are important because they make audio content searchable online, and accessible to people with hearing disabilities. Recent advances in speech-to-text technologies have made great progress in opening audio to the web, but the transcripts they produce are still error-prone and require careful human editing to reach full accuracy.

Our solution: Computer-generated transcripts corrected by real people.

The New York Public Library and The Moth — both curators of rich and ongoing personal storytelling archives are combining the innovative computer-generated transcription services of Pop Up Archive with a community engagement model designed to correct and enrich transcripts in collaboration with the public.

NYPL Labs has developed an Open Transcript Editor that will make it easy for people everywhere to correct transcripts for over 500 recorded stage stories from The Moth and over 1,000 stories from NYPL’s Community Oral History Project. This project is made possible with generous support provided by the Knight Prototype Fund, an initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Live in NYC?

Extra, extra! Are you a developer, designer, or producer interested in audio accessibility for the public good? On June 25-26, 2016, we’re hosting Open Audio Weekend, a collaborative coding event at The New York Public Library. Learn more and apply to attend!