How CSU Made 1,200 Interviews Instantly Searchable

Overview

Cleveland State University’s Center for Public History + Digital Humanities runs Cleveland Voices, one of the largest geographically-specific oral history archives in the U.S. With over 1,200 interviews recorded since 2002, the team needed a better way to transcribe, publish, and make their archive searchable. After trying numerous tools and facing years of transcription bottlenecks they found a solution in Alice.

The challenge

Cleveland State University’s Center for Public History + Digital Humanities runs Cleveland Voices, one of the largest geographically-specific oral history archives in the U.S. With over 1,200 interviews recorded since 2002, the team needed a better way to transcribe, publish, and make their archive searchable. After trying numerous tools and facing years of transcription bottlenecks they found a solution in Alice.

Why Alice worked

Alice delivered on three fronts:

Accuracy
Transcripts were so clean that staff could follow along at 2x speed with minimal edits.

speed
Processing time was cut dramatically, unlocking a long backlog of interviews.
Simplicity: No training, no setup. Just upload, transcribe, and publish.

SIMPLICITY
No training, no setup. Just upload, transcribe, and publish.

Testimonial

“The quality of Alice’s transcripts is so good we read along while playing the audio at 2x speed. It’s been a game-changer.”

Erin Bell, Project Manager

The results

backlog cleared faster
Dozens of interviews processed in days, not months

improved access
High-quality transcripts make content searchable and usable for all

Sustained growth
Alice enables CSU to keep scaling their archive without more staff or funding