Information for Volunteer Transcribers
What is Dementia Diaries?
Dementia Diaries is a project co-ordinated by Innovations in Dementia.
Dementia Diaries enables people who are living with dementia to record their day-to-day reflections and experiences as short short audio or film recordings.
The audio diaries are then posted on:
- Soundcloud – www.soundcloud.com/dementia-diaries
- The Dementia Diaries website - www.dementiadiaries.org
- Blue Sky @dementiacommunity.bsky.social
- Facebook www.facebook.com/dementiadiariesposts
Recordings are available to the public as soon as they have been published. - YouTube www.youtube.com/channel
- Instagram dementiadiaries2024
Why is the project important?
By talking about their lives to the public, we hope to improve understanding of their diverse experiences of living with dementia. Communities, individuals, professionals, and services can become more aware, and have a better understanding, of day-to-day life experiences.
Recordings can be used to help others affected by dementia or publicly by professionals in training, media, meetings, or conferences.
How do you become a transcriber?
It’s so simple! You don’t even have to contact us! Just go to the Diaries that Need Transcribing page on the website which you can find in the navigation above or click on the link shown below.
Once on the page choose a post that needs transcribing and click on the picture to go to the recording for that entry.
Then you just start to play the recording on the left and type your transcription into the box on the right. You can pause or rewind the recording whenever you need to catch up or correct. It’s usually best to play the recording at least twice to make sure you have caught
everything correctly.
If you simply can’t hear a specific word or phrase, just type [inaudible] and keep going.
Once you have finished just enter your details into the fileds shown and then click the green Submit button.
You can do as many or as few transcriptions as you like, typically they will only take between 10-20 minutes of your time – and we appreciate every one! We also hope you enjoy it too.
Here’s a quote from one of our transcribers...
“It was a pleasure to find such an innovative project that provides people living with dementia with a platform to be able to talk about their experiences. I hear about their triumphs and their challenges, I laugh with them in the humorous moments, and I sit with them in awe at the resilience they show in the face of adversity. I feel pride at their achievements, and I agree when they talk about the stigma or difficulties they face. I learn - I really learn a lot from their voices. It takes very little time to transcribe a Dementia Diaries entry, I feel that it is the least that I can do - and I feel good about doing it!”
Tips on transcribing
All our transcribers do things slightly differently and that is fine.
But here are a few tips:
- Try to type the words you hear. Don’t abbreviate or edit.
- If there are pauses or gaps, you could put in dot dot dot …
- Putting in paragraphs is helpful if you can, as continuous text is harder to digest.
- Keep grammar as it is please – do not correct
- Don’t include every um and ah as this looks off-putting
- If you can’t hear a word or phrase put in brackets [inaudible]
How else can you help promote Dementia Diaries?
You can:
- encourage people with dementia who you know to become Diarists
- follow us on Twitter and/ or Facebook to share reports
- try to integrate Dementia Diaries into other projects you might be involved in
Innovations in Dementia
Call: 07720 538851
Email: DementiaDiaries@Outlook.com