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Digital Recorders:
I tried to use a digital recorder in my fieldwork recently but found it to be a mixed choice to have made. Trying to be oh so technologically advanced in my work, the relatively advanced and reliable digital recorder I bought was small and so easily portable, had lots of options, a good microphone, and the ability to both 'bookmark' moments in the recording and to have multiple 'folders' of recordings. AND I could upload the recording directly to my laptop.
But, the biggest drawback and one that became so big that I no longer used the recorder was that the amount of time alotted to each 'folder' on the recorder was not long enough for the average hour or more interview. Manuevering the small LCD screen of directions during an interview, and thus bypassing the recording into a second 'folder' was not possible given the parameters of your average interview.
Another not so great thing was that as time went on, I accumulated more and more interviews which necessarily needed to be uploaded off the recorder and onto my laptop. I set up a location on my harddrive in which to store the interviews which worked fine but when I went to transcribe them, I could have better used a cassette tape in a transcribing machine. The number of keystrokes on the keyboard necessary to navigate my word processing program (Microsoft Word) and stopping and starting the audio player on my laptop (Media Player), became prohibitive. A transcribing machine uses footpedals to start and stop the audio and makes transcribing MUCH easier. Besides, having the cassette tapes gave me a much greater sense of security. I would not be able to as easily delete a single or multiple interview/s. I could do this in a blink of an eye if the interviews were on a laptop that accidentally got dropped or got a virus. (Sarah Orndorff, New School for Social Research)
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