[ARSCLIST] voice recognition software

[Brandon Burke <burke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Friends,

It has been suggested that our institution purchase voice recognition 
software for the transcription of oral history interviews.  Naturally, I am 
against this decision.  The product in question is Dragon Naturally 
Speaking but I imagine others would satisfy this person equally.

as I see it...

* Digital recording devices need to be "trained" before every 
session.  That means interviewees have to sit there and read the phone book 
out loud for several minutes.  I can't imagine that going over well..

* It's probably difficult for VRS to understand what to do when multiple, 
concurrent accents.  (Ex: person #1 is from Texas but #2 is from France.)

* VRS probably reacts unfavorably to loud background noise.

* Punctuation likely require serious editing, enough so to question why the 
software "saves time".


Arguments either for and against VRS are welcome as are suggestions 
regarding improvements to the classic cassette-recorder situation.  I 
should tell you as well that I'm thinking about moving up to a hand-held 
digital recorder.  Something like the Marantz PMD-600 series...namely 
because they tend to have USB outs.

thanks as always,
Brandon


_______________________________________
Brandon Burke
Assistant Archivist for Audiovisual Collections
Hoover Institution Archives
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6010
voice: 650.724.9711
fax: 650.725.3445
email: burke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx