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Interview: Digitiser Catrìona Scott

My name’s Catriona Scott. I live in Lochboisdale, and work for Tobar an Dualchais as a digitiser.

Uh, we receive reels from the School of Scottish Studies and the BBC. We then have to put them onto an Otari machine, which will, sort of, take the information off the tape and then takes it into another box which is called Sadie which will then digitise this onto our computer which makes it into – well we process a WAV file from – taking it from the Sadie into the computer. Uh we then make them into MP3s, so obviously it’s a smaller – smaller than the WAV – which can be listened to and sent over the Internet and what have you, so that other people can listen to them, so that we can actually keep the information on the reels, um, because there comes a time when the reel is actually going to be, well, non-existent really – it will be there but it’ll just kind of be – falls apart basically.

We make the MP3s and then we send them off to cataloguers which are, sort of, dotted around Scotland. Uh, they receive the MP3, uh, and listen to them. They then sort of split them into tracks, uh, stories, songs, whatever’s on whichever particular tape that they receive. Uh, obviously the cataloguer is chosen to their specialised – whether it’s singing or whatever. Uh, they split the tracks, well split the, the MP3 into tracks, uh, put the timings into the database, uh, and write a small summary on each individual track, so that it’s ready for the Tobar an Dualchais website.

It’s very interesting. There’s a lot of, uh, old stories and songs and, um, just stories that I probably heard myself when I was growing up, but didn’t really take much interest, although the ghost stories are kind of something that you always remember. Um, but it’s very interesting, yes, and it just brings people that you knew, bring them back to life really. It’s just really interesting and really nice to listen to.

Well, my grandfather and my father’s given quite a few bits and different sort of things, stories and, um, in particular probably area in Orm(acleit) – he came from Ormacleit so there’s items about Ormacleit and birds, sort of different ways of life and things like that, and my grandfather – I hadn’t met him, I wasn’t born before he died. Listening to him was really interesting, telling a story. Um, yeah, just lots of different people.

I enjoy it very much. Yes, I hadn’t really – I had, um, I did recordings for, um, Liniclate Museum, probably in 1995, and that was just sort of for DAT, and we did film as well, but I’ve never actually watched any of them. So, I was interested, and quite interested in the traditions of the island anyway, and the culture and what have you, and then when the opportunity came about to apply for this I applied for it and luckily I got the job, and I’ve really really enjoyed it.

There’s an awful lot of work still to be done, although our project finishes at the end of February 2010. Um obviously it’s to do with money and it would be quite good if there was money out there to continue the project. Yeah, it would be fantastic.

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