The Talkbank Database

TalkBank

Downloading and Browsing

The TalkBank database contains transcript and media data collected from conversations with adults and older children. All of the data is transcribed in CHAT and CA/CHAT formats. The use of TalkBank data is governed by the Creative Commons License. Please remember to read and follow the Ground Rules for data-sharing.

Accessing TalkBank Data

There are two ways to access TalkBank data

You can use the link labelled "Browsable Database" to play back media directly linked to transcripts in your browser.
Or you can click on the link labelled "**Index to Corpora**" to access pages for each corpus which then have links for downloading the Transcripts and Media for work on your local machine.

Working with transcripts and media locally

You need to download the transcripts and unzip them.
If the corpus is linked to audio or video, you need to download those media files and place the media into the transcript folders. See below for how to do this with the Multi-File Downloader extension in Chrome.
You need to download and install the CLAN program.
To open a transcript, you double-click on it. If there is associated media, you can play the media using escape-8 for continuous playback or command-click for playing single utterances.

Downloading Media using Chrome

We have packaged transcripts together into .zip files for easy downloading, but this doesn't work well for media. If you want to download all of the media for a given corpus, you can do this using an extension to the Chrome browser called Multi-File Downloader which is available from the Chrome Web Store. To install it in Chrome, open up the Extensions window and drag it onto the window. This will install a green downward-pointing arrow in your extensions list at the top of Chrome. When you navigate to a page from which you wish to do multiple downloads, you click on that icon and it explains how to proceed with the downloading. The items will go to your Chrome downloads folder. You can change the location of that folder inside your Chrome preferences.

You can also download collections of TalkBank media using wget. Use of wget involves complicated installation and usage, but if you know how to use it, then it can work well.