Since this has been the Weekend Of Farmer Uploads for me, I’m posting two days in a row. This morning I went through Lecture 038 to make sure I was still happy with my transcription work; an interesting aspect of this process is that it feels like, no matter how many times I rewatch them, I come across a new bit of formatting to fix, or a small alteration in wording from what I’d written down.
So in the process of doing that, first, a positive. I was going through it with the new possession of the metadata files Carolyn Parsons from Special Collections had sent over, which placed the recording of this lecture at ‘198?’. Halfway through, though, I realized that part of the research I’d done while captioning the video narrowed that range down by half. Farmer discusses the (unfair) conviction for voter fraud of Spiver Gordon, a former fellow CORE member, a case that took place in fall of 1985. Furthermore, since Farmer mentions that Spiver has appealed but that he doesn’t know how the appeal will turn out, which means that the lecture probably takes place within a year of the event. That kind of new information has given me a lot of appreciation for how different branches of history and historical research work together.
And really, a big thank you is due to both the New York Times archives and to the online work of various historians and organizations, which have been an enormous help to me in the Googling of various niche politicians and weirdly-difficult-to-spell Southern towns.
The negative is that, upon trying to upload the video and captions to the site, and then upon some frantic searching through Omeka’s forums, I discovered that 038 (the longest of the three, at an hour and eight minutes) just slightly exceeds the maximum upload limit for our site. This can be changed, but I’m awaiting advice from Angie on how, as it might involve some fairly hands-on editing that I want to verify we’re doing right.
In the meantime, though, I can continue writing summaries and formatting transcriptions for the lectures, as well as working with my group on the project’s other branches.
It sounds like your group is working on some pretty tedious aspects of your project right now; don’t worry, you’ll get through it! About the upload limit, I’m not sure what the exact issue is, but it might be a good idea to talk to a DKC consultant. I’ve had a similar problem and they helped me out quite a bit.
Sounds like some good detective/historical work on narrowing down the date.