Ukrainian Folklore Audio Files

[nataliek at UALBERTA.CA]

We would like to announce a major update to our Ukrainian Folklore  
Sound Recordings web site. This site can be accessed from our  
Ukrainian Traditional Folklore web site: www.arts.ualberta.ca/uvp/ by  
clicking on “Verbal Culture.”  Or go directly to  
http://projects.tapor.ualberta.ca/UkraineAudio/

Description of the Database:
Although the recordings are in Ukrainian they can now be searched in  
Ukrainian or in English. This update is a result of the combined  
efforts of Eric Zhang (Research Computing Senior Analyst, TAPoR),  
Svitlana Kukherenko (Graduate Student in Folklore), Peter Holloway,  
and myself.  In brief: over 170 hours of recordings made by me over  
the last 11 years, mainly in villages in Central Ukraine, were  
digitized and then indexed by Svitlana.  She used a list of topics  
(and sub-topics) to note down the time in each interview recording  
when a topic was mentioned.  All this was assembled into 32,233 lines  
of XML code.  The 21 major topics include:  Ritual/holiday, Birth,  
Baptism, Wedding, Funeral, Folk poetry, Song, Narratives etc.

How the Database works:
Clicking on Wedding brings up a list of 10 sub-topics including:  
Ritual foods, Ritual songs, Narratives.  Narratives leads to a list of  
41, Songs to 25 further sub-topics categorized as Before-, During-,  
After the Wedding.  This was the result of a LOT of work.  The last 6  
months were spent on re-indexing the recordings to generate the  
multiple topic categories. There are over 4,500 searchable  
combinations which ultimately lead the viewer to finding a very small  
sub-set of the 5,600 actual recording segments.  At that point, the  
Interview Form can be viewed, the information on the date of  
interview, location, people interviewed etc. can be seen and the  
selected part of the recording can be heard.  It is also possible to  
listen to all other parts of that total interview by moving the  
“time-bar” of the player.  Please have a look.

Rationale for latest update:
We feel that providing the ability to search by topics in English will  
be valuable to the large number of Ukrainian heritage speakers many of  
whom can understand spoken Ukrainian, but not the language in its  
written form.

We hope you enjoy the update and PLEASE let us know of any errors or  
suggestions by emailing us at nataliek at ualberta.ca.  We are certain  
that errors exist, but with the enormous volume of data to worth with,  
catching all of them is somewhere between difficult and impossible.   
So please help us out if you spot something.

Natalie Kononenko
Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography
Editor, Folklorica
University of Alberta
Modern Languages and Cultural Studies
200 Arts Building
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E6
Phone: 780-492-6810
Web: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/uvp/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------