OHMS: Enhancing access to oral history for free

A recent effort at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries has sought to make using oral histories online more efficient and fluid. The Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), a web-based system, provides users with word-level search capability and a time-correlated transcript or index, connecting the textual search term to the corresponding moment in the recorded interview online. This article reflects on the creation of OHMS and recent attempts to address its two original shortcomings: its inability to handle untranscribed interviews and its incompatibility with archives beyond the Kentucky Digital Library.