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Oral History Archive

A WordPress oral history archive with finding aids, rights controls, timed transcripts, citations, and a public reading room.

by doodersrage · github.com/doodersrage/oral-history-archive · website

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Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/doodersrage/oral-history-archive/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
No built-in updater. New versions won't appear under Dashboard → Updates. Install new releases yourself, or let Git Updater track the repository.
Readme github.com/doodersrage/oral-history-archive ↗

A WordPress plugin for interviews, not episodes. Each record is a finding-aid entry: narrator, interviewer, accession number, timed tape log, and a consent status that can withhold the recording while still listing that the conversation exists.

Podcast plugins assume the audio is the product. This one assumes the opposite: the catalog is public, the tape is a privilege the narrator can refuse.

What you get

  • Interview post type with collections and topics
  • Rights: open for listening, restricted (catalog only), or embargoed until a date
  • Tape log parser (00:00:12 Narrator: …) stored as timed cues
  • Reading-room frontend: finding aid table, restriction stamps, synced transcript player
  • Citation block in oral-history form
  • Clip shortcode for quoting a time range: [oha_clip accession="OH-2019-014" start="12" end="48"]

Restricted interviews never print the audio URL in public HTML.

Install on an existing WordPress site

cd wp-content/plugins
git clone https://github.com/doodersrage/oral-history-archive.git

That creates wp-content/plugins/oral-history-archive/ with the main plugin file at the top level. Then activate Oral History Archive.

Or build/upload a release zip:

./scripts/build-release.sh
# → dist/oral-history-archive-*.zip

Then activate Oral History Archive.

Activation creates a Reading room page. It does not change your site front page. Optionally set that page under Settings → Reading, or visit /interviews/.

scripts/ and tests/ are local-demo tooling. Leave them for development; omit them when building the WordPress.org zip (see .distignore). Plugin Check on a full git checkout will flag those files — that is expected.

WordPress.org directory assets live in .wordpress-org/.

Tape log format

00:00:00 Interviewer: Today is March 18, 2019.
00:00:12 Maria Chen: I still open the gate at three thirty.
01:02:03 Interviewer: What changed?

Hours are optional. Lines that do not match are ignored. # starts a comment.

Local demo (no MySQL)

Requires PHP 8+, the SQLite PDO extension, espeak-ng, and ffmpeg (only for synthesizing the sample tapes).

./scripts/bootstrap-wp.sh
./scripts/start-server.sh

The demo seeds four records from a fictional East Bay labor archive: two open for listening, one sealed during the narrator’s lifetime, one embargoed until 2028. The voices are synthesized stand-ins so the player and tape log can be tested without depositing real interviews.

php tests/test-transcript.php

Rights model

Status Catalog Audio + transcript
Open for listening Listed Playable
Restricted Listed, with the public restriction statement Hidden
Embargoed Listed, with the lift date Hidden until that date

That is the difference from a podcast: a sealed interview is still part of the archive.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later