OHD_PRS_0259 Learning from ourselves : Reusing institutional oral

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We would like to start by quickly introducing our projects, as we will be using them to illustrate our methodologies. My project is with Seaton Delaval Hall, which is a National Trust heritage site in the North East of England. The land has been in the hands of the Delaval family since 1066 after the Norman conquest. The hall now standing on that land was completed in 1728, it partially burnt down in 1822, was restored after the Second World War and was then given to the National Trust in 2009. The National Trust, set up in 1895, is one of the biggest heritage and conservation charities in the UK and also one of its largest landowners. In a review done in 2020 the National Trust revealed that Seaton Delaval Hall amongst many other properties had connections with the slave trade and other colonial activities. My PhD is looking into how we can reuse oral history recordings on heritage sites and how heritage sites can benefit from reusing oral history recordings beyond the usual collecting of stories.

My project is at the Archives at NCBS which is a collecting centre for the history of science in India situated at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. I want to study the processes of institutional policy making through the lens of gendered safety policies in scientific institutions. I hope to understand the various deliberations and considerations behind policy-making in different areas, through interviews with the stakeholders of institution policy – policy-makers, enforcers, students and staff. Some questions I hope to ask include specific concerns about safety that led to action from scientific institutions, how policy solutions were formulated, debated and enacted, the responses to these actions from persons on campus, and the corroboration and/or dissonance between anxieties of campus occupants and policy. I am aiming to learn more about gender discourses that informed policy, and the feedback to this discourse after their adoption into daily working.

The reason these projects have been brought together for this presentation is firstly due to convenience. We met at Archives at NCBS and then got talking about our projects, which revealed an overlap in our motives within our respective projects, which is reusing oral histories. In particular, we are approaching oral histories from the perspective of the archives. Moreover, while both of us are acting as independent observers, we are doing so on behalf of our respective institutions and our work is deeply embedded within them. Within this context – deeply tied to the institution and to the archive – we found that the “oral history project” format, i.e. recording oral history and then turning it into a book or exhibition, does not fit the rhythm of either. The institution and the archive aim to work in perpetuity, while the oral history project is often tied to a single moment, and is distinctly linear and terminal. The “oral history project” format simply does not accommodate what we wish to do with institutional memory. So we propose a new method of approaching oral history projects cyclically by recording with the explicit intention of reuse by a different individual at a later date, and reusing with the explicit intention of connecting oral history projects to the history of doing history in the institution. But before we explain our new method we need to understand oral history’s relationship with institutional memory, what it offers as a tool to capture or perhaps not capture when it comes to institutional memory.

In a 1986 paper on the use of history as an organisational resource, Omar El Sawy, Glenn Gomes and Manolete Gonzalez describe how institutional memory consists of semantic memory – or past learning that has been codified into procedures and processes – and episodic memory – defined by them as the unwritten memories within an organisation of a “repertoire of responses” to various situations that arise in the course of working, held as stories, myths, artefacts by individuals. Organisational or institutional memory – used interchangeably – is therefore defined as “…accumulated equity representing the beliefs and behaviours of organisational members both past and present cumulated over the life of the organisation”.

In our experience, archival records can allow us to trace the histories of policy deliberations. We can know when specific infrastructure, facilities, policies, and even laws were instituted. Through letters, meeting minutes, and personal records we may even find added context. What we lose is an implicit, often commonly understood discourse, that informs the creation and adoption of policies by members of the institution, based on different lived experiences inside and outside the institution over time – basically the intangible memory that El Sawy et. al. termed episodic.

On a basic level, oral histories work to simply fill gaps in knowledge in records – for instance, at NCBS in the OH catalogue, in an interview with an architect who worked on the construction of the campus, one finds reference to an on-site stone crusher to make jelly for construction that caused the interviewee lung problems due to fine debris. They state that this experience led to the removal of on-site crushers in all future constructions. The memory of this event has been institutionalised as a standard process, without there being a push to preserve the memory itself. Similarly, at Seaton Delaval Hall, through oral history interviews Hannah found information on various maintenance and conservation jobs that had been done over the decades which had not been formally documented. She also found how the management styles of the various general managers of the hall have affected the relationship between the staff and the volunteers. This is particularly important in the National Trust because the sites rely heavily on volunteers to run the sites.

But oral histories can also contain more abstract information. For instance, at Seaton Delaval Hall, the oral history interviews were able to capture historiography, so how people have talked about certain events over time. This is a possible helpful source to the running of heritage sites and how the staff might develop exhibitions and installations to either match or challenge people’s feelings around certain events or include material and stories which they prioritise or miss out. To give another example from the NCBS catalogue, several interviews refer to a sense of alienation felt between incoming students and the institution. These references can be found across students, faculty and staff, with differing personal explanations for this feeling from all quarters – whether it’s the question of open labs, the creation of departmental silos, or the changing priorities of the student body. This sort of documentation of ‘feeling’ is the unique advantage of oral history as a source – and gives vital information about the individual-institution relationship.

So we fully champion oral history interviews as a way to capture institutional memory, but we need to remember one of the very important traits of institutional memory, which is how it is distinctly dynamic in nature. In a 2020 monograph, James Corbett argues how institutional memory is more than a collection of facts and figures, and even recollections of events and contexts – it is a narrative about the institution’s wider identity. This narrative Corbett discusses comes from Charlotte Linde’s 2009 monograph, Working the Past: Narrative and Institutional Memory. In it she defines institutional memory as “representations of the past” brought into the present by individuals. Because of the nature of the workplace institutional memory is dynamic, because representations of the past change with the people representing it, the purposes for which narratives are created, and the changing circumstances and shape of the institution itself.

And this is where things start getting complicated, because as we established oral history is good at capturing institutional memory, but the format of the “oral history project” does not lend itself to preserving the dynamic nature of institutional memory. There are several reasons for this, the first being the well-known fact that no one reuses oral history recordings, it is in Michael Frisch’s words “the deep dark secret of oral history”. In reality this is not a secret but more like the very large bright pink elephant in the room no one wants to talk about. Oral history recordings rarely get reused when an oral history project ends, which is not why we record oral histories. One of the reasons we wish to record is because they capture the “missing” parts of history, which are important for an institution to reflect on its current trajectory. An example of an oral history project which focused on recording institutional memory but suffered the same fate as every other project was done by the United Nations. The UN did an oral history project titled The United Nations Intellectual History Project or UNIHP to investigate the history of ideas with the UN. It followed a similar format to any other oral history project with the knowledge found in the oral histories published into a several volume book series. Oral history itself is neither finite nor final, and projects like UNIHP – i.e. terminal project that ends by creating a heavy bulk of static knowledge – build in redundancy by attempting to codify it without factoring in the inherent changeability of narratives in an operative institution. In a paper on UNIHP the reader is pointed toward a website www.unhistory.org, which now will bring you to a Japanese holding website. A further search only turns up a handful of articles and references to the book series. There is no evidence of the recordings being easily accessible today. Historians, like Portelli have discussed a long-time impulse to turn oral history into a written transcript before use, as a way to make such interviews an objective source – but we have far moved past the point where the legitimacy of oral history was in question. Our continued attachment to text-based outcomes has done injustice to the new possibilities offered by oral history.

Within our project we wanted to use oral history to capture institutional memory but the oral history project format misses the dynamism of memory which is so valuable to our understanding of the history of institutions. So we offer an alternative. Instead of the somewhat linear method of recording, making something, likely text-based, from those recordings and then leaving it in an archive to gather dust, we propose a continuous cycle between recording and reusing. In this cycle you record with the primary aim for it to be reused further down the line by someone else and you reuse with the aim to record new material based on what you found in the archived recordings. We believe this cycle can achieve a more integrated culture of oral history instead of having the occasional oral history project. We will take you through the stages more specifically with Hannah discussing how she has recorded oral histories with aim of reuse and then looking at how Soumya reused oral histories with the aim of recording.

Record for reuse

For my project with Seaton Delaval Hall I specifically approached my recording with the question – what will the people who will be reusing want from this? Of course there is no way to really know what they would want in the future. So instead of directly answering the question, I decided to get a better understanding of the community surrounding the hall, their hopes and dreams, and also make sure they knew about my work and what I have to offer by recording oral histories. How I did this materialised in two ways: integrating into the hall’s community and leaving behind as much of my findings as possible.

I started off simple when integrating into the hall’s community by volunteering as a room guide. I then also did a three month placement where I helped them set up an onsite research room. When it came to recruiting for my oral history project I nearly always had the staff help me find candidates and I have always been transparent about who I am recording. I also started to ask the staff if they had any questions they would like put to the interviewees or whether they were looking to find out something about the history of the hall or the maintenance of the hall. For example, the gardener wanted to know the exact date the rose garden was planted which the old caretaker of the property could answer. I also have been able to work out the location of the old kitchen garden by recording people who had been at the property during the Second World War. I am not suggesting they would not have been able to find this information anywhere else but asking a human is often faster than searching through piles of archival material. I have also been able to capture the various ideas people had for raising money for the hall. These ideas could be helpful for any other property wishing to raise money if they wanted to know what worked and what did not. I hope that by being more visible and collaborating with the staff I make the value of oral history more visible and prove to them how it can help them in their work.

The second way I am trying to help the people who would be reusing my oral histories is by making sure I leave behind as much information in addition to the recording.This is important because the structure and nature of heritage organisations means there is a lot of staff rotation. Each new staff member has to relearn the history of the hall and neither them nor I will have the time to chat about all what can be found in the oral histories I have recorded. I therefore need to create a document that helps them navigate the oral histories and seek out their value, without it being a hefty transcript. I made a spreadsheet, because nearly everyone can open these on their devices.

On one sheet we have the oral history recordings breakdown, where I have given a summary of the whole recording, but also broken the recording down into sections I believe might be relevant, because interviews can be studied in the context of a number of themes, which we miss out on if we only stick to the objective of an individual, time-bound project. In addition I gave each section a value tag. The value tags come partially from me, historiography, institutional knowledge, and stories, and also from how the National Trust assigns value to their collection items. These value tags will obviously also change over time, as we alter our perception of what is valuable. This means we are continuously capturing our perception of value within the archive and the institution. In addition, the spreadsheet also contains a sheet with a recruitment plan so anyone is able to continue recording oral histories if they wish to do so. What I wanted to achieve with this spreadsheet is to make an easily searchable document that encourages people to go and listen to the recordings, while also allowing them to easily add and edit the entries if necessary. I believe my insistence on integrating into the Seaton Delaval Hall community and leaving behind as much information as possible besides the recording should help heritage sites integrate oral history into their day-to-day instead of having the occasional “oral history project”.

Reuse for recording

To reiterate, my project – on the history of gendered policy making in scientific institutions – began in the course of my internship as an archivist at the Archives at NCBS, which also entailed learning the methodology of oral history interviews. After talking to our artist-in-residence at the time about women’s safety on campus, I became interested in recording oral histories on the topic. I started exploring secondary sources as background work for my project, and found myself relying on past oral history interviews, which made me realise the importance of not creating in a vacuum when it comes to studying institutional memory, eventually culminating in my discussions with Hannah around reusing oral histories.

The plan for the project was initially to record life story interviews with a list of people across various informal interest groups on campus, and across scientific institutions in Bangalore. As with any other project documenting institutional history, my first step was to explore secondary sources. I found the work of Abha Sur, who had discussed CV Raman’s treatment of the women in his lab; and Deepika Sarma, who while writing for the magazine Connect, had explored women’s experience as later entrants into IISc. Both these projects used archival records in combination with oral history interviews they were conducting. I also went to 13 Ways, an exhibition from 2017 put up by the Archives at NCBS, which had a section dealing with gender. 13 Ways was a narrative born out of a catalogue of more than 60 oral history interviews, as well as 600+ archival objects. Having referred to these secondary sources, due diligence required that I track down the primary source, and I was able to gain access to the summaries of the oral history interviews done at NCBS – though not the actual recordings. The oral history interviews had been recorded to document the history of NCBS in 2016. These interviews include both life story interviews and interviews specific to the involvement of individuals with the construction of campus.

Oral histories have a unique usefulness in histories of gender given the absence of gender in archival records – and in the beginning I was only reusing oral history projects insofar as they bridged this gap of information. But navigating the catalogue as I was planning out my project helped me realise the methodological value of intentional reuse for the purposes of studying institutional memory.

In planning out my interviews, I could not sidestep the problem that in asking direct questions about gender, I would be providing my interviewees a lens through which to view their lives. This was especially problematic as gender is not a neutral lens, especially in the field of science. I’m under no illusions about the subjectivity of oral histories, and the value of documenting narratives regardless. From having read Sur and Sarma’s work, I had realised, however, that my project had a different objective, because I was trying to study gender in the institution over time, instead of how it played out in one specific individual’s life, or one specific moment of time. My project combined gender and institutional history, and as we have established, the study of institutional memory is a collation of individual narratives. I worried that any conclusions I would draw from my interviews would be so fixed within the specific gender discourse of the present, that I would be left with very little scope for generalisation beyond individual experience.

Reusing oral histories from a past project helps me in three ways:

Firstly, I was able to find discussions of gender from people who either were completely absent from the archives, or who were generally believed to be unconnected to the issue, for instance, discussions on gender with canteen and security staff. Often overlooked in the processes of decision-making, their involvement in everyday activities on campus as subjects, observers, enactors, and in some cases enforcers, contained reflections on campus culture and power hierarchies that is completely missing from archival record. This led me to include a wider demographic in my interview plans.

Secondly, reusing oral histories lets me understand the events in the past that may or may not have shaped my interviewee’s present perceptions of the issue of gender – which will enable me to ask questions about events instead of themes in my interviews.

The oral history interviews contained information about undocumented events that were well-known on campus which I would have had no idea to even ask about – such as references to a protest and awareness/information campaign against sexual harassment in the immediate neighbourhood of campus by students, a recounting of efforts from students to formally organise into a gender collective that had fallen through, and even additional context around the institution of a shuttle service for people who walked home. In several cases, past interviews recorded the perspectives of persons who are now inaccessible. This kind of background knowledge has helped me plan out interviews such that I have some control and intentionality in where I bring in the specific lens of gender. It will let me ask questions about lived experiences without always having to guide the interviewee towards my theme. In other words it lets me talk about gender without asking about gender. This has the additional benefit of making my interviews more viable for reuse by future researchers, feeding into the cycle of recording and reusing we are proposing.

Finally, reusing the past catalogue allowed me to see the same events and themes discussed from a completely different vantage point, which will let me find patterns in my data and past data in comparison. This will hopefully allow me to construct generalisable knowledge for the institution. Gender exists within the scope of institutional memory, and therefore it is a dynamic and perpetually reshaped discourse. By providing a historiography of gender discourse, reusing past oral history interviews lets me subvert the inherent temporality of interviews to methodologically meet the requirements of studying institutional memory. Simply put, by resisting the urge to create in a vacuum, and locating my project in a continuum of other such projects, I, and researchers who study the institution after me, are better equipped to study the evolution of memory in an institution rather than its instance in a specific moment.

Conclusion

To quickly summarise, oral history is an excellent way to capture institutional memory because it captures the feelings and networks which are not held in archival documents, which motivated us to do our respective projects. However, the format of the oral history project freezes institutional memory into a rather unnatural state since by its nature institutional memory is forever changing and evolving together with the people who make up the organisation, especially as we are dealing with organisations that are still operational. Using our experience of recording and reusing oral history we have been able to explore an alternative to the usual oral history project format. We proposed that when you record oral histories you take in consideration the potential for reuse and so put in labour to make the recordings more accessible for future researchers who could be exploring a variety of themes. We also suggest that when beginning the process of recording oral histories to study institutions, researchers refer back to previous oral history projects and sources to enrich their own understanding and provide deeper and more complex context for their individual themes and lines of questioning. These two approaches, for us, allow us to rethink the concept of oral histories within institutions in a way which makes the process of studying them reiterative, and so complements the dynamic nature of memory in an operating institution, such that we are able to use the methodology of oral histories to its fullest extent.

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Sources:

El Sawy, O. A., Gomes, G. M., & Gonzalez, M. V., 1986. Preserving Institutional Memory: The Management of History as an Organizational Resource. Academy of Management Proceedings, 1986(1), 118–122. doi:10.5465/ambpp.1986.4980227
Emmerij, L., 2005, June. The History of Ideas: An Introduction to the United Nations Intellectual History Project. In Forum for Development Studies (Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 9-20). Taylor & Francis Group.
Frisch, M., 2008. “Three Dimensions and More” in Handbook of Emergent Methods, p.221.
Huxtable, S. et al., 2020. Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery. National Trust: Swindon
Linde, C., 2009. Working the Past: Narrative and Institutional Memory. United Kingdom: OUP USA.
National Trust., 2023. Seaton Delaval Hall. [Website]. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/north-east/seaton-delaval-hall
Portelli, A., 2009. What Makes Oral History Different. In: Giudice, L.D. (eds) Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101395_2
Sarma, D. 2021, June 21.Women and the Institute. Connect. https://connect.iisc.ac.in/2018/06/women-and-the-institute/
Srinivasan, V., 2017. 13 Ways [Exhibition]. Archives at NCBS, Bengaluru, India. http://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/exhibit/13ways/
Summaries of oral history interviews, Oral history collection at Archives at NCBS. http://catalogue.archives.ncbs.res.in/repositories/2/resources/14
Sur, A., 2001. Dispersed Radiance Women Scientists in C. V. Raman’s Laboratory. Meridians, 1(2), 95–127. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40338457
Weiss, T.G. and Carayannis, T., 2005, June. Ideas matter: voices from the United Nations. In Forum for Development Studies (Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 243-274). Taylor & Francis Group.

OHD_WRT_0257 Possible activities and outputs of placement at NCBS

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Summary of placement activities and planned outcomes

Original:

During this placement I am looking to do a critical investigation in the past, present, and possible future culture of the archive at NCBS. I will have meetings with current members of staff and others who have previously been part of the archives’ eco system. The main aim of this placement is to look at how an archival habitus is established and how it might be enhanced and supported through the systems and processes of the archive. I will also engage with the day-to-day activities of the archive, which will include experiencing the day-to-day collection of archival materials and public engagement projects.

Levels of Access

If Archives at NCBS is thinking of scaling up and moving material online there are several issues to consider, especially when expanding public access such as, data protection, copyright, the format of the material, to name but a few. And because there are so many factors, different archival material will require different levels of access. I am interested in, how decisions are made about levels of access are and how access is assigned [GS1] to archival materials. Access to oral histories can be especially tricky. I believe tackling this issue will involve identifying the different spaces where people can access material, what the terms and conditions are for each of these spaces, and a matrix which helps categorise where individual archival material can be put.

Institutional memory and the grant cycle

More than 60 students and professionals coming from a variety of career backgrounds and age groups have worked within the walls of Archives at NCBS. This richness of diversity has made the Archives into the innovative and open space it is today. However, this situation does have its drawbacks especially in combination with the grant cycle. A grant often requires things to be achieved within a set time limit, meaning you want to waste as little time as possible. You do not want the new intern spending a lot of time learning all the unexpected quirks of the Archive, exploring ideas that have already been tested, or establishing relationships already established by their predecessors. So how do you avoid losing time? How do you transfer institutional memory from one intern to the next? This is something I would like to explore and attempt to find solutions which help people pick where others left off allowing the Archive to work more efficiently within the grant cycle.

The Archives at NCBS and NUOHUC collaboration project[GS2]

This is probably something to be explored further down the line when certain meetings have been had. From what I have deduced from the few conversations I have had about this project; some thought needs to go into what exactly will be collected. This includes archival material, as there has been mention of getting oral history participants to draw, and legal material as there might be cases where participants are unable to read certain forms. I am happy to contribute my thoughts to this project as I am interested in the relationship between the producers of archival material and the archive.

[GS1]Unsure if this is what you mean…

[GS2]Excellent points

OHD_RPT_0256 Options for making oral histories accessible

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Tech options for making oral history recordings accessible

V1. January 30 2023

Hannah James Louwerse, Archives at NCBS

Making oral history recordings accessible to people has been infamously difficult, with the oral historian Michael Frisch referring to the issue as “oral history’s deep dark secret”. There have been many attempts to solve this problem with some being more successful than others. By analysing the history of oral history technologies one can see how using technology to access to oral history recordings depends on three factors: maintenance, ethics, and user-friendliness. This short report will go through each of these factors bringing examples of oral history technologies to explain what you should look for when seeking a solution to putting oral history recordings online.

Maintenance

Maintenance is often the biggest killer of solutions to the deep dark secret of oral history. Maintenance depends on a continuous supply of money and labour, which is not always easy to get hold of, especially within grant cycles. It is therefore essential to think about the maintenance necessary to sustain a technology which allows access to oral history recordings. How you do this depends on the source of the technology and how it was developed.

Tailor-made, in house development and maintenance

Creating your own digital oral history archiving system allows it to be perfectly tailor to your collections needs. However, it also means the maintenance of this system is solely in your hands, which can be very risky, especially when working within grant cycles. Projects like the Visual Oral/Aural History Archive (VOAHA) created by Sherna Berger Gluck at California State University, Long Beach and Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database developed by Doug Boyd built tailor-made technologies specifically for their existing oral history collections, either developing the technology themselves or hired someone to do it for them. At the time they were the height of technology, but when the money ran out there was none left to maintain the archives/databases. Both VOAHA and Boyd’s Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database were “digitally abandoned” and left vulnerable to inevitable technical obsolescence and online hackers (Boyd and Larson, 2014, p. 7; Boyd, 2014, p. 90). In the end the two projects were absorbed by their respective universities’ libraries.

1.2 Use existing specialist oral history software

By using specialist oral history software, the maintenance is no longer your responsibility, which is both a risk and a benefit. The benefit is how it is a cheaper option in comparison to hiring someone full time to take care of the technology. But the risk is that the software developer stops maintaining the software, which is what happen in the case of Stories Matter, an oral history software developed by the Centre of Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University and a software engineer from Kamicode software (High, 2010; Jessee, Zembrycki, and High, 2011). The Kamicode website still has a page on Stories Matter, but the software is not downloadable. The reason for this is unclear, however it is easy to imagine the maintaining of such niche software is unlikely to be a high priority for a software company.

A more successful example of specialist oral history software is Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), developed by Doug Boyd after his reflections on Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database. OHMS has been in existence for some years and is a popular way for oral history projects and archives to organise their oral history metadata and link the video/audio file to a searchable text. Unlike Stories Matter, OHMS is developed and maintained by people who are interested in oral history and use it for their own projects. Maintaining OHMS is therefore in their own interest.

1.3 Use existing mainstream third party platforms

Another cheaper option is using more mainstream platforms such as Soundcloud or Spotify. These are less niche technologies and therefore do not have the benefits more specialised software has, but the maintenance is pretty much guaranteed since these platforms are universally used. Certain projects have created Spotify playlists and other have Soundcloud versions of their recordings alongside the original files in the brick-and-mortar archive.

Ethics

The internet is an ethical nightmare and putting someone’s personal story online in an ethical manner is not an easy task. The starting point will always be clear communication to the interviewees on how people will be able to access their recording, and thorough paperwork which accompanies the recording. Following this there are a couple of other things people have done to support the ethical handling of oral history recordings.

2.1 Extracts

The simplest of ethical practices is to only make certain extracts available online. This means you can avoid putting online more sensitive information but still give an example to the archive visitor of the kind of content the oral history holds. If the archive visitor wishes to hear more, they can request the full recording via email. A possible consequence of this might be people only using the online extract and not bother enquiring any further because it is deemed as “too much effort.”

2.2 End user agreement

Archives like Trove and Centre for Brooklyn History have “end user agreements” the archive visitor must agree to before they are allowed access to the oral history recording. These end user agreements contain information on basic copyright and data rights, a disclaimer about the opinions expressed in the recording, and outline the archive user’s obligations. These obligations include correctly citing the recording, adhering copyright law and data protection law. These end user agreements are a way for archives to hold users accountable in case of misuse or rights violations.

User-friendliness

People have a low tolerance of bad user-experience design. The software Interclipper, championed by Michael Frisch was reviewed during the development of Stories Matter and VOAHA and was deemed difficult to use in both instances (Jessee, Zembrycki, and High, 2011; Gluck, 2014). It no longer exists. OHMS offers both a backend metadata synchronizer and a viewer, the latter however is often left in favour of an in-house interface design. Project Jukebox developed by the University of Alaska in collaboration with Apple Computers Inc. in the 1990s, is still available online but still looks like it was made in the 90s, even though at the time it was described as “a fantastic jump into space age technology” (Lake, 1991, p. 30). It is therefore important the user experience and interface are updated as fashions and taste evolve across the wider internet.

List of examples

Project Jukebox: https://jukebox.uaf.edu/
Stories Matter: https://www.kamicode.com/en/portfolio/project/23-concordia-university-stories-matter
VOAHA: https://csulb-dspace.calstate.edu/handle/10211.3/206609
Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database: https://crdl.galileo.usg.edu/collections/crminky/?Welcome
OHMS: https://www.oralhistoryonline.org/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/balticarchive
Spotify: https://anchor.fm/RainhamHall
Trove: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-220064352/listen
Centre for Brooklyn History: https://oralhistory.brooklynhistory.org/interviews/rivera-dolores-19920911/

Bibliography

Boyd, D.A. (2014) ““I Just Want to Click on It to Listen”: Oral History Archives, Orality, and Usability” in Oral History and Digital Humanities. pp. 77-96. Palgrave Macmillan: New York

Boyd, D.A. and Larson, M. (2014) “Introduction” in Oral History and Digital Humanities. pp. 1-16. Palgrave Macmillan: New York

Gluck, S.B. (2014) “Why do we call it oral history? Refocusing on orality/aurality in the digital age” in Oral History and Digital Humanities. pp. 35-52. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

High, S. (2010) “Telling stories: A reflection on oral history and new media” in Oral History. 38(1), pp.101-112

Jessee, E., Zembrzycki, S. and High, S. (2011) “Stories Matter: Conceptual challenges in the development of oral history database building software” In Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 12(1)

Lake, G.L. (1991) “Project Jukebox: An Innovative Way to Access and Preserve Oral History Records” in Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists. 9(1), pp.24-41

Smith, S. (Oct 1991) “Project Jukebox: ‘We Are Digitizing Our Oral History Collection… and We’re Including a Database.’” at The Church Conference: Finding Our Way in the Communication Age. pp. 16 – 24. Anchorage, AK

OHD_BLG_0254 Blog post on the first month at NCBS

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From a lively archive in Bangalore

Between indulging in delicious food and gandering around the stunning campus of the National Centre of Biological Sciences (NCBS), I sit at a hot desk in the basement where the Archives at NCBS is housed. The term ‘basement’ is slightly misleading as the sun shines through windows which face a sunken outdoor amphitheatre, where I can watch paradise birds flirt with each other in the trees. When not distracted by birds or food, my attention might be drawn away from my work by one of the eleven other people working in the Archive. It is the loudest archive I have ever been in, even when I discount the constant humming of the air conditioning. It is also the most welcoming workplace I have ever worked in. The Archives at NCBS is a hub of multidisciplinary folk, all coming together to build this archive, which is still very much in its infancy, celebrating its fourth birthday on this month. Therefore, a lot of the work is focused on growing the archive, with some team members creating a digital catalogue, others expanding the collection, and many involved in developing the various work flows necessary to keep an archive running.

This development of workflows, which I am also playing a role in, is necessary because, like so many organisations in the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) sector, the Archives at NCBS is working within the grant cycle. This automatically leads to a lack of consistency under the staff and therefore creates a somewhat unsettled work environment. From February 2019 to February 2023, around 60 interns have passed through the archives’ doors. When I started my conversations with the head of the archives about doing my placement here, the archives team was three people. Now it has grown to twelve, including two archivists, a software developer, various artists in residence and an outreach team. There are also several other researchers who use the Archives’ reading room and offices to work in. What I am witnessing within the walls of the NCBS basement is how the sudden expansion and change within the archive is causing some growing pains. These growing pains should not be considered a negative, but as part of the natural process of building an organisation. They are what is motivating the development of various workflows.

Developing these workflows is necessary because, while the previous team of three were easily able to know exactly what the others were doing, the current members of the archive team are slightly less sure, even though they are all in the same room. By creating workflows, the workers of the archive, new, old, temporary, and permanent, will be supported in their work, allowing the larger work of the archive to be carried easily through the grant cycles and revolving door of many interns. However, this is not an easy task, especially when everyone still needs to carry out their day-to-day work alongside the workflow development. I am, therefore, doing my bit by creating the archives’ notice and takedown workflow. I am looking into how the archives can edit, redact, and remove archival material and capturing this process in a way which is helpful for users of the archives and present and future archivists.

While overall my first month in India has been delightful; filled with lovely weather, delicious food, and a group of generous and considerate co-workers, I will admit it took me some time to find my feet in the work at the archive. At first it was not clear what I should be doing, but now, with the development of the takedown workflow, I have been given direction, and am glad to be here to help the archive through this unsteady and nebulous time. The Archives at NCBS might not know exactly what it is doing right now, but that is okay; no one really knows what they are going to be at the age of four.

OHD_WHB_0248 Miro board of the archiving workflow

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OHD_WHB_0247 Miro board of the NCBS away day

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OHD_WHB_0246 Miro board of NCBS placement

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OHD_LST_0244 Links to archives and online fun

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Podcasts

BBC Radio 4 – A History of Ghosts Ep. Did You Hear That?

BBC Radio 4 – The Patch

BBC Radio 4 – Under the Cloud

BBC Sounds – Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket, Ep. 4 – Baby X

Puskin – The Last Archive

Reply All – #168 Happiness Calculator vs. Alex Goldman

Reply All – #171 Account Suspended

This American Life – The Room of Requirement

Documentaries

Dirty Streaming: The Internet’s Big Secret

The Great Hack

The Social Dilemma

Shirkers

Online Things

Activist Archivists

The Affective Computing Research Group

Archive It built by the internet archive

Axiell Software developers

CC Search

Center for Humane Technology

Citizen DJ

CoHERE 4 – Futurescaping and the Deletion Bureau

Expire-Span

Dadbot

Europeana

Festival of Maintenance

The Green Web Foundation

Hereafter.ai

The John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage

Magic Tate Ball

The Maintainers

mnemoscape

National Digital Stewardship Alliance

Networks of Dispossession

Participatory Grant Making

Rhizomes

Save our Sounds by The British Library

Sheep Tales

Sites of Conscience

The Things We Did Next

Yarn

Talks

Impossible Archives, Infinite Collections by Carles Guerra

Shklovski, I. (2021) AI as relational Infrastructure during the Not Equal summer webinars

OHD_WRT_0243 The digital needs of the Research Room

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The Research Room digital infrastructure is set up in this way

The Research Room digital infrastructure is not there to support permeant preservation. It is possible that we might need to build in a system where the contents of the research room is reviewed in order to keep the volume of contents under control

1. SharePoint

This is where files go where the National Trust does not have full copyright. In order to access these files you need to contact a National Trust member of staff. These cannot be very large files, for carbon neutrality reasons.

2. Secure SD cards

These are SD cards or hard drives which hold files where the National Trust does not have full copyright. In order to access these files you need to contact a National Trust member of staff. These can be very large files.

3. Research Room SD cards

These are SD cards or hard drives which hold files where the National Trust does have full copyright. You can access these files by putting them into a device available in the research room. These can be very large files. Moving stuff onto these SD cards is not smooth yet.

4. Third Party Websites

This is where files go where the National Trust does have full copyright and is happy for a wider audience to have access. These can be very large files and because they are not part of the national trust network they do not effect the trust’s carbon neutral aims. Ethically questionable. Moving stuff onto these website is not smooth yet.

5. Research Room devices (tablets)

This is where smaller files go and larger more popular files where the National Trust does have full copyright. For the easiest of access. Moving stuff onto these on these devices is not smooth yet.

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Research Room volunteer training programme

Every one goes through the process but you dont have to do all of it

OHD_DSF_0240 Heritage Surrogates after climate disaster

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Hello welcome. My name is Hannah and today I want to take you through a couple fo examples of how our surrogates collection has helped us recreate heritage in times of great loss.

Just for those who do not know our surrogate collection is a collection of metadata that describes a material object or site and its context. The data in the surrogate collection is groups of information like, photographs, measurements, scans of maps, descriptions, and even oral history recordings. Our initial motivation to collect this information was because certain items we were interested in would come up for auction and in some cases we would be unable to acquire it and it would end up in a private collection. The thought was that if we had enough surrogate information and this information was store a safe and secure location we might be able to recreate certain objects if we needed to. The later also started to include items that were being treated by decay or mould or we simply could no longer look after properly because of budget cuts. After storm Humboldt which significantly damage the collection of a property in the south and the lost of cliff house a year later the institute decided to up the surrogate collection policy by getting sites to actively think about which collection items might be at risk and then even more ambitious act of creating surrogates for whole sites in some cases. This also led to an increase in oral histories being recorded as part of the surrogate scheme.

Moving on to our examples…

My first example is this bench which is a replica of a bench that was burnt during a fire caused by a severe drought we had a couple of years ago. The file on this bench in the surrogate collection had a couple of photographs but most importantly it had an oral history and some literature from the person who made the bench because they used particular techniques that are not very common knowledge.

The second development is one of our more recent project, which comes from the surrogate file on Seaton Sluice. The village no longer exists because after significant storms throughout the late 2020s it was deemed a unsafe space to live. At the time we collected maps, oral histories and photographs.

For the anniversary of the final resident leaving the village we commissioned a group of artists to create an audio visual experience to give an impression of Seaton Sluice before we lost it. We sifted through the surrogate data, the maps, photographs and recordings, and did a public call out for anyone who might have any material linked to the village, which led us to record new oral histories.

From this material two visual artists and sound artist created this beautiful map of Seaton Sluice which visually showed the different eras of the village and then on the map you had links to different audio clips. These audio varied between soundscapes, music and oral histories often mixing them together. In addition because we had so much archival material we also a creative writing student make a collection of short stories about Seaton Sluice, this was an extra thing visitors could buy. This project only week live a week ago so we have not yet had time to gather or evaluate feedback.

My last example it probably our most successful application of the surrogate collection, our local history storytellers. This does what it says on the tin. Storytellers go round visiting pubs, village halls and schools etc. telling stories of the local history. These stories are specifically about things in our surrogate collections because these are the things people do not have access to via museums or archives. We found that the surrogate collection is not used a lot by the public, so we wanted to do develop something that is a little more accessible and ended up with the storytellers. They have been great success. We are in our second year now and we have ten different storytelling programmes around the country and we are currently looking to add two new locations. People have said about the storytellers that they find it very engaging way to tell history and many have also commented on the pleasantness of the evenings and find them very relaxing. The schools similarly enjoy the storytellers. One of my favourite quotes came from Thomas, at St Mary’s Primary School saying, “I was going to go dressed up as Harry Potter for Book Day but now I am definitely going to go as Johnny the stable boy.”

So these are just three examples of what we are currently doing with our surrogate collection but we have many more in the pipeline and hope that we are able to do more as people become more aware of the collection and its potentail.

OHD_DSF_0239 Regional annual NT IT workshop

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After the success of last year Regional NT IT Workshop it was decided that we must do it again. Of course nothing is perfect on the first try so we have made some changes. The schedule is a little less full and we have extended an invite to the volunteers.

Arrival – 8:30

Tea and coffee available

Lunch orders taken

Welcome – 9:00

The regional It manager will welcome everyone, do some housekeeping, and run through the schedule.

Morning Sessions

Session one: Surrogate Collections development plan – 9:30

Regional curator will present the current progress on the Surrogate Collection and future plans. And will end this session by opening up the floor to questions and ideas.

Break – 10:45

Session Two: Show and Tell Exhibitions – 11:00

This session is all about sharing ideas between sites by doing a ‘show and tell’ of the different exhibitions, that have taken place this last year , which utilise digital technology to engage visitors.

Lunch – 12:30

Afternoon Sessions

Session Three: Digital Hygiene training – 13:30

This session will cover SharePoint updates, newly approved hard drives and the new and improve digital hygiene training for staff and volunteers.

Break – 14:45

Session Four: Future of NT IT Workshop – 15:00

The workshop leads will run a series of activities which allow all to express their hopes and desires for the future of NT IT.

Round off and networking – 16:00

OHD_DSF_0238 Oral history project retention table

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Title of item	Item type	Brief Description	Retention Condition
SDH_PP_001_AUDIO	WAV	Oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall volunteer. Part of the Research Group. Some memory of the hall before the National Trust.	File to be kept for 25 years and then destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 25 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 15 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_002_AUDIO	WAV	Oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall staff member. Discusses the COVID-19 pandemic and the Curtain Rises restoration project.	File to be kept for 30 years and then destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 30 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 15 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_003_AUDIO	WAV	Oral history recording of previous resident of Seaton Delaval Hall. Lived at the hall from 1947 to 2018.	File to be kept for 40 years and then destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 40 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_004_AUDIO	WAV	Auto-oral history recording of PhD student memories of Seaton Delaval Hall. The student is the interviewer in the other SDH_PP recordings.	File to be kept for 20 years and then transcribed and the audio is destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 20 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 10 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_005_AUDIO	WAV	Oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall volunteer. Possibly the first National Trust volunteer. Discusses the fundraising for acquisition and the hall before the National Trust.	File to be kept for 20 years and then destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 20 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 10 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_006_AUDIO	WAV	Oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall volunteer. Discusses the fundraising for acquisition and the hall before the National Trust. Also mentions activist work in local surrounding villages.	File to be kept for 25 years and then destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 25 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 15 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_007_AUDIO	WAV	Oral history recording of a person who lived in Seaton Delaval during the war and remembers walking past the Seaton Delaval Hall to Seaton Sluice.	File to be kept for 20 years and then transcribed and the audio is destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 20 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 10 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_008_AUDIO	WAV	Oral history recording of a person who did a variety of jobs at Seaton Delaval Hall both before and after the National Trust this included working in the market garden and architectural jobs.	File to be kept for 30 years and then transcribed and the audio is destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 30 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 15 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_009_AUDIO	WAV	Oral history recording of the eight vicar of the Seaton Delaval parish telling tales of the Church of Our Lady on the Seaton Delaval Hall property.	File to be kept for 40 years and then transcribed and the audio is destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 40 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_010_AUDIO	WAV	Oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall volunteer. Discusses a lot of the fundraising for acquisition and research into the hall.	File to be kept for 20 years and then transcribed and the audio is destroyed. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than five times OR use in a publication, exhibition or similar within the 20 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 10 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_001_TRANSCRIPT	PDF	Transcript of oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall volunteer. Part of the Research Group. Some memory of the hall before the National Trust.	File to be kept for 40 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 40 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_002_TRANSCRIPT	PDF	Transcript of oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall staff member. Discusses the COVID-19 pandemic and the Curtain Rises restoration project.	File to be kept for 40 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 40 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_003_TRANSCRIPT	PDF	Transcript of oral history recording of previous resident of Seaton Delaval Hall. Lived at the hall from 1947 to 2018.	File to be kept for 40 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 40 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_004_SUMMARY	PDF	Summary of auto-oral history recording of PhD student memories of Seaton Delaval Hall. The student is the interviewer in the other SDH_PP recordings.	File to be kept for 30 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 30 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_005_TRANSCRIPT	PDF	Transcript of oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall volunteer. Possibly the first National Trust volunteer. Discusses the fundraising for acquisition and the hall before the National Trust.	File to be kept for 40 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 40 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_006_TRANSCRIPT	PDF	Transcript of oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall volunteer. Discusses the fundraising for acquisition and the hall before the National Trust. Also mentions activist work in local surrounding villages.	File to be kept for 40 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 40 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_007_SUMMARY	PDF	Summary of oral history recording of a person who lived in Seaton Delaval during the war and remembers walking past the Seaton Delaval Hall to Seaton Sluice.	File to be kept for 30 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 30 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_008_SUMMARY	PDF	Summary of oral history recording of a person who did a variety of jobs at Seaton Delaval Hall both before and after the National Trust this included working in the market garden and architectural jobs.	File to be kept for 30 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 30 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_009_SUMMARY	PDF	Summary of oral history recording of the eight vicar of the Seaton Delaval parish telling tales of the Church of Our Lady on the Seaton Delaval Hall property.	File to be kept for 30 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 30 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_010_SUMMARY	PDF	Summary of oral history recording of Seaton Delaval Hall volunteer. Discusses a lot of the fundraising for acquisition and research into the hall.	File to be kept for 30 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 30 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_METADATA	PDF	Spreadsheet of the SDH_PP oral history recordings’ metadata, includes interview length, location, equipment, and tags.	File to be kept for 30 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 30 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.
SDH_PP_PROJECT_SUMMARY	PDF	Document by the SDH_PP interview on the project. Includes a brief summary on process and their reflection on the project.	File to be kept for 40 years and then printed off. UNLESS accessed and listened to more than ten times within the 40 year retention period. If so retention is extended by another 20 years and then reviewed.