Datasets:

glossAPI
/

istorima

task_categories:
  - text-classification
language:
  - el
tags:
  - oral-history
  - interviews
  - greek
  - transcription
  - named-entity-recognition
pretty_name: Istorima Dataset
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K
license: cc-by-nc-nd-4.0

Dataset Language:
Greek

Dataset Info:
This dataset consists of oral history content collected from the Istorima archive, including transcribed interviews and associated metadata. The material reflects personal narratives and life stories, primarily in Greek, covering a wide range of social, cultural, and historical topics.

Metadata Info:
This dataset consists of 13,548 oral history interview records, structured as a tabular dataset with mixed data types. Each record includes a unique identifier (id) along with textual fields such as title, summary, transcription, speaker_name, and researcher_name. Additional metadata fields capture thematic and categorical information (themes, tags), geographic references (geonames, interview_place), and temporal attributes (date, published_at). The dataset also includes numerical and boolean features such as duration_minutes, is_age_restricted, and is_on_demand, as well as a language field indicating the interview language.

Metadata Field Descriptions:

Field	Type	Description
`id`	int	Unique numeric identifier for the interview, as assigned by the Istorima archive (ranges from 9790 to 267770, not sequential).
`title`	string	Title of the interview, typically a quote or summary phrase chosen by the editorial team.
`summary`	string	Editorial description of the interview content — a paragraph summarizing the topics, people, and events discussed.
`transcription`	string	Full transcribed dialogue of the interview in the format `[Speaker Initials]: text`, with each speaker turn on its own line separated by blank lines. Empty string for the 297 on-demand interviews that have no public transcript.
`speaker_name`	string	Name of the interviewee (the person telling their story). For anonymous speakers (`is_age_restricted` or by request), this is a pseudonym or alias, not their real name.
`researcher_name`	string	Name of the Istorima researcher who conducted and recorded the interview.
`themes`	string	Broad thematic categories assigned to the interview (e.g., `Καθημερινή Ζωή, Διατροφή και Συνταγές`), comma-separated. These are high-level editorial classifications from a controlled vocabulary.
`date`	string	Date the interview was conducted, in `YYYY-MM-DD` format. Ranges mostly from 2019 to 2024, with a handful of historical recordings dating back to 1943.
`tags`	string	Specific keyword tags describing the interview content (e.g., `Γιαγιά, Μαγειρική, Ποντιακά Φαγητά`), comma-separated. More granular than themes — typically 5–25 tags per interview.
`geonames`	string	Geographic locations referenced in the interview (places the story talks about, not where it was recorded), comma-separated in the format `Place Name (latitude, longitude)`. Sourced from the GeoNames database.
`interview_place`	string	Free-text description of where the interview was physically recorded (e.g., `Λόφος Λειβάδας`, `Θεσσαλονίκη`). This is the recording location, not the places discussed in the story.
`published_at`	string	Date the interview was published on the Istorima archive website, in `YYYY-MM-DD` format. Typically 1–2 years after the interview date.
`duration_minutes`	float	Duration of the interview audio/video recording in minutes (e.g., `38.52` means 38 minutes and 31 seconds).
`language`	string	ISO language code of the interview, almost always `el` (Greek).
`is_age_restricted`	bool	Whether the interview contains sensitive content requiring age verification to access on the website (2,392 interviews). The transcription is still included in the dataset.
`is_on_demand`	bool	Whether the interview is available only on request and has no public transcript (297 interviews). These entries have an empty `transcription` field.

Dataset Statistics:
Words: 96,479,186
Tokens: 138,933,365

License:
This dataset is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Any commercial use requires prior written permission from Istorima. All intellectual property rights remain with Istorima.

Dataset Moved:
This dataset is hosted by the Mozilla Data Collective. Please use the official link below for the most up-to-date version:
Istorima - Mozilla Data Collective