Articles

Voces Oral History Project is the leading Latino oral history archive in the United States. Founded in 1999 by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, journalism professor in the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin, the has sought to capture untold stories of Latinos and Latinas who served—in the military or on the home front—during World War II. Since that time, the Voces archive has expanded to include the Korean and Vietnam Wars as well as political and civic engagement, focusing on the continuing fight for Latino civil rights.

Voces is currently suspending all interviews, in-person meetings, and events until, at least, the end of April. However, the Voces staff have identified volunteer opportunities that can be performed from home that are educational, fun, and tremendously valuable to the overall mission of the project—to record and disseminate the stories of U.S. Latinas and Latinos and weave their many perspectives into the historical narrative at the national, state, and local levels.

Voces Oral History Project Seeks "From-Home" Volunteers

To date, the Voces Oral History Project has recorded over 1,270 interviews, many of which are available on the project website. Some interviews only have an index, but the gold standard is an actual transcript. Voces can easily produce a free, automated transcript from YouTube, but these transcripts generally have many mistakes.

Voces welcomes volunteers who can view these interviews on YouTube and help clean up the associated transcripts. "From-home" volunteers will receive an unedited transcript in a Word document and are asked to return an edited transcript with time stamps via email. Additional instructions will be provided. The project's goal is to create synchronized online interviews.

If you are interested in participating, please email the Voces team at voces@utexas.edu with answers to the four questions below:

Essential requirements:

  • Do you have broadband access? (Necessary to watch the YouTube interview.)
  • Do you have Microsoft Word or another text-editing program to edit the transcript?

Additional helpful information:

  • Do you use Google Forms? (This is another way of editing the transcript.)
  • Can you read/edit Spanish?

If you have additional questions, please contact voces@utexas.edu.

                                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                                    
Photos courtesy of the Voces Oral History Project.