OHD_WRT_0135 The Journey of Oral History Technologies

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In Back to the Future Part Two, Marty McFly travels to 2015. There are flying cars, holograms, hoverboards, and many many fax machines, but no sign of the internet or smart phones. It is easy for twenty-first century viewers of the film to roll their eyes at this past portrayal of the future, because we are blessed with hindsight. These technologies have so seamlessly integrated into our lives, we cannot imagine a world without the internet or smart phones. People who have been able to perfectly predict future technologies are in a significant minority. The majority of portrayals of the future either have been or will be proven incorrect. This principle can be transferred onto the real world, where people spend their time developing technologies in the hope that it will become the future only for it to miserably fail. Artistic interpretations of the future and experimental future technologies are kindred spirits fuelled by great hope and excitement. In the early 1990s one of the first oral history technologies was born in Alaska at the University of Alaska Fairbanks — Project Jukebox. According to a paper on this digital oral history archive, “a fantastic jump into space age technology awaits the user when he or she sits down before the Jukebox workstation.” (Lake, p. 30) This “space age” technology involved a lot of CD-roms and received support from Apple Computer Inc. (their words not mine) through their Apple Library of Tomorrow scheme. In the papers written on Project Jukebox there is this wonderful sense of hope that technology will solve the problem with reusing oral histories, but like Back to the Future Part Two hindsight makes us shake our heads at talk of CDs. The discussion around copyright is especially alien to 2021 readers as it focuses solely on the copyright of the photographs in the archive, with little to nothing on the copyright of the recordings and no mention of the interviewees’ privacy. (Smith, p. 19) In the first chapter of the book Oral History and the Digital Humanities, Willem Schneider, who was one of the original creators of Project Jukebox acknowledges their hopeful naivety: “we stumbled onto digital technology for oral history under the false assumption that it would save us money and personnel in the long run.” (p. 19) This does not mean that Project Jukebox was a failure, on the contrary, it plays an essential role at the start of the journey of oral history technology. The naive exploration of future technologies is the first stage of all journeys that aim to find a technology that becomes as everyday as the smart phone.

However, the journey from naive exploration of future technologies to seamlessly integrated technologies is a bumpy ride. It is really hard to establish a technology in society. It takes a lot of work and time, and above all — money. In the following essay I am going to look at the journey of digital oral history technologies. I would not be writing this if there already was an established digital oral history technology but, we are also no longer in the naive exploration stage that Project Jukebox started. We are somewhere in the middle, which in my opinion is the hardest place to be: no longer in the fun, playful, and hopeful beginning stages, but still quite a way off a solution. I therefore am not going to talk about which digital oral history technology is the most user-friendly. I believe it would be very unproductive to pit these technologies against each other, instead I want to discuss what I believe contributes to the struggle of establishing a solid oral history technology.

I must confess that the research I had to do for this essay was not the easiest. Not only do many of the oral history technologies no longer exist but there is minimal literature on why they stopped existing. I have a folder filled with papers and articles all on the topic of digital solutions in oral history archiving and reuse. There are many hyperlinks in these documents, some even have QR codes, sadly the majority of them are dead links. I can probably count the amount of links that do work on my fingers, which is not great when you are doing research. From my limited research on these technologies I have however been able to extract a handful of factors that play contribute to the bumpy journey of developing oral history technologies, including the usual suspect — money. But first we need to understand what happens to our storage and preservation systems when we introduce digital technologies.

Tech = Risk = Maintenance = Money

In my house there are several types of analogue storage units: bookshelves, cupboards, drawers etc. If I put a book on a shelf it stays there unless I move it or some uncivilised person decides to remove it without my permission. It is possible I might forget which shelf I put it on and have to spend some time searching for it, desperately trying to remember if I had lend it to somebody. In this scenario in order to preserve, store, and access the book I need nothing more than a shelf to keep it safe, and my brain to remember where it is. This is a pretty stable situation as the shelf does not move and my brain currently functioning fine (touch wood). Now I have found my book I want to put some background tunes on while I read. I get my electronic device (laptop or smart phone); press away the notification that I need to do an operating systems update; realise it has no battery so have to plug it in the mains, after locating my charge; and then finally open my Apple Music application (formally iTunes) and play the song. I might even connect my device to a bluetooth speaker so that the sound is better quality. Here there are a couple more steps and players involved in the storing, preserving and accessing of my song than in comparison with my book on the shelf, but as long as I have the hardware, software, power supply I have access.

However, it is the twenty-first century so nothing actually happens unless you post it on social media. I capture this moment of me reading my book and listening to my music by again using hardware, software, and power supply, but to upload the image onto the storage space of social media several more actors come into play. Firstly, I need WiFi, which is supported by a very complicated infrastructure of towers and wires. Secondly, I need the appropriate social media application, which is supported by a separate infrastructure of towers, wires, and servers. Both these infrastructures rely on a huge power supply to function. If there is any disruption in the internet supply or at the social media servers I cannot store or access my images on my social media profile and can therefore not prove that I read books.

With this narration I wanted to illustrate what happens when we introduce digital technologies to our storage and access systems. I find that there is a direct correlation between the amount of technology needed to store, preserve and access stuff, and the potential risks associated with that same system. In order to avoid these potential risks more maintenance is required, which in turn means that more money is needed to keep everything running smoothly. Doug Boyd, who is the Director of the Louie B. Nunn Centre for Oral History at the University of Kentucky, has experienced how the lack of acknowledgment of the rise in risk, maintenance, and money due to an increase digital technology can be the downfall of an oral history technology. Boyd worked on the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database, which in his words was a “gorgeous” website that had “logical” information architecture.  However, Boyd also admits that the project was intensely focused on the userbility of the site and actually was more akin to a “complex, elaborate, and beautiful digital [exhibit]” than a digital oral history archive. (2014, p. 89) This user-centric design of the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database, meant that the archiving perspective fell by the wayside. There was minimal consideration for the maintenance required to keep all this digital technology running smoothly, and the money needed to sustain this maintenance. Boyd admits that it eventually led to the website being “digitally abandoned, opened up to online hackers and eventually taken down.” (2014, p. 90) The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database is an example of the naive experimentation that happens at the beginning of the technological journey. We learn from these experiences and move on, which is exactly what Boyd went on to do.

Growing Pains

The Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) was developed by Boyd after his work on the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database. It still exists, which is quite an achievement. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database OHMS is not a repository but a software that individuals can use to make their repository better. There are two parts to OHMS, the Synchronizer, where the user creates the metadata for the oral history recording and, the Viewer, which makes it easy for others to access and search the oral history recording. (2013, p. 97) When it comes to the amount of digital technology involved in OHMS compared to the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database, I cannot say for sure whether it is more or less because I simply do not know enough about their set up. Either way, both are web based, so it is likely to be a considerable amount and definitely more than my bookshelf. Boyd is therefore still battling with the high amount of maintenance, luckily though he is now more aware of it. In a 2013 article he reflected on OHMS’ original shortcomings: its heavy reliance on transcripts and the struggle to expand it beyond the Kentucky Digital Library.

It is well known that text is a lot more searchable than audio files. This is one of the founding ideas of OHMS as it connects up the audio/video file with a transcript. However, not all oral histories have transcripts because they are expensive to make: only big institutions with huge amounts of funding could afford transcribing all the oral history recordings. (2013, p. 99) This is a good example of how technology dictates the amount of money and work needed. OHMS’ technology needed transcripts to work, but this requires a lot of work and money, making the system a very exclusive product. Boyd, however, went back to the drawing board and, inspired by Michael Frisch’s ideas around indexing, altered OHMS to be able to also run off indexes. Indexing involves a lot less work which means it is cheaper. (2013, p.100) The technology also does not suffer because indexing is text based. The quick text searches which was the foundation of the original OHMS design can still be run.

When it comes to the issue of moving OHMS beyond the Kentucky Digital Library Boyd’s has a little less to write in his 2013 paper. (2013, p. 105) I find the tone in this section similar to the Project Jukebox papers; filled with hopes and goals for the future. There is a hint of awareness that the road is rough ahead, OHMS is open source which Boyd admits “does not always mean free or simple”. However, the following to me is the stand out hope:

The hope is that smaller historical societies or similar organizations with very limited budgets and almost no IT support can take full advantage of the OHMS system for presenting oral history collections online. (2013, p. 105)

This to me feels like a very distant future. These technological solutions, Project Jukebox, the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database, OHMS, have all been developed and used within universities which have relatively high (although not enough) access to funding opportunities. But I also do not believe that money is the only barrier to achieving Boyd’s dream. I have suspicion that “limited IT support” is a barrier that is higher than we think.

DIY Digital

Computers are magical. They can do really amazing things. However just like a hammer or a paint brush this magic can only be unlocked by a skilled user. Computers are after all no more than very complicated tools. Their complicated nature has sadly resulted in only a select group of people (mostly men) fully understanding the ins and outs of these tools. This discrepancy between those who do understand computers and those who do not is referred to as the “digital divide”, a termed coined in United States during 1990s. The digital divide refers to the differing levels of access to hardware, software, and the internet. Professor of Communication Science at the University of Twente, Jan A. G. M. Van Dijk explains in his 2017 paper, Digital Divide: Impact of Access, how in the early 2000s the main focus of the research into the digital divide was on digital infrastructure and access to physical devices and the internet (p. 1). In recent years the idea of access has been broadened to include the skills needed to access and retrive information and increasingly, the skills needed to communicate through various mediums, and create content. The reason for this expansion is because digital inequalities did not disappear in places where there was unilateral physical access to digital technologies. Van Dijk believes that digital inequality only truly starts after digital media had become defused into our everyday lives (p. 2). He splits the digital divide into three types of access: physical, skills, and usage. I will be focusing on the latter two and the divide that occurs after physical access has been achieve.

The access granted by skills can be view from two directions: the creator and the user. I would like to start by looking at how skills can facilitate access in the former and then look at skills and usage from the perspective of the user. Willem Schneider writes that there are three main roles in oral history preservation: the oral historian, the collection manager, and the information technology specialist. If we consider the things I talked about in the previous section, the preservation of the oral history relies increasingly heavily on the skills of the information technology specialist, especially when things are moved online. They are the ones who have to handle the risks and maintenance of the digital technology involved in the project. Their computer and digital skills directly influences and limits the preservation and access of the oral history recording.

In the case of Stories Matter the person taking on this role was Jacques Langlois. Stories Matter started as a in-house database software created at the Centre of Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University in Montreal. In the abstract of an article on the development of the software, Stories Matter is described as a programme that “encourages a shift away from transcription, enabling oral historians to continue to interact with their interviews in an efficient manner without compromising the greater life history context of their interviewees”. (Jessee, Zembrzycki, High, p. 1) Jacques Langlois was the software engineer from Kamicode software, who mostly had experience in developing video games and no experience with oral history. (Jessee, Zembrzycki, High, p. 5) As a software engineer Langlois has a higher level of digital skills in comparison to the rest of the team working on the software. There was a clear digital divide between the rest of the team and Langlois. This only expanded when Langlois decided to use the the runtime platform Adobe Air, which the rest of the development team had little to no knowledge of and therefore were unable to support Langlois in his development. (Jessee, Zembrzycki, High, p. 6) How the individual team members approached the development of the software was also a result of their in-team digital divide. The oral historians viewed the software as something made for oral historians by oral historians and were primarily focused on userbility, which as I previously discussed was something Boyd has noted as the downfall of the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database. Meanwhile Langlois simply wanted to make sure that the software did not crash and ran smoothly. The digital divide in the team and the pressures on Langlois are perfectly illustrated in the article on the programme through a frustrating bug finding saga. (Jessee, Zembrzycki, High, p. 9)

As far as I can tell Stories Matter no longer exists. The majority of the links in the article on the software are dead and, although Stories Matter does have a page on the Kamicode software website, I am unable to download it. As I mentioned in the first section of this paper building an application software and keeping that sustainable and updated takes up an insane amount of money, labour, and time. You cannot just make an application and hope that it lasts forever because it will not. Technology is constantly evolving; new devices are developed and the operating systems are constantly updated by their own developers.

When it comes to the user side of oral history technologies I would like to start by highlighting that the majority of the time oral historians do not use bespoke oral history software. In a paper on the now non-existent InterClipper software Douglas Lambert and Michael Frisch identify a couple of “caveats” when it comes to their use of technology. When reflecting on the 1990s cyber punk roots of the digital age they admit that a do-it-yourself mentality of “rummaging around in our virtual toolbox” instead of “waiting for the “perfect software” or a single methodology to resolve the complex challenges of oral history practice in the digital age” is often a cheaper, quicker, and more effective way of analysing oral histories (p. 142). This does not mean that oral historians should adopt an exclusively DIY approach and give up making a more appropriate oral history software. However, I do believe that maybe reflecting a bit more on the tools we already use and searching within the parameters of our own digital skills, we might save some time and money. Most importantly I believe that this attitude can help us stay grounded and stops us from getting swept away in the magic of digital technology. In addition I believe that this principle can be extend to encompass not only our digital skills but also our personal research skills.

I did it my way

In the document on Stories Matter the writer discuss InterClipper and their experiences of using it. InterClipper was initially a software developed for market research and was enthusiastically adopted by Michael Frisch in 1998. The appealing thing about the software was “the seamless linkage between the digital audio/video files and a fairly robust multifield database for annotating and marking audio/video passages.” (Lambert and Frisch, p.137)  However, according to the Stories Matter team, the students who tested out InterClipper found a handful of problems with the software. They did not like that the oral history recordings had already been clipped. The students found that they clipped recordings were difficult to navigate and they lost the wider context of the life history. Furthermore, they disliked the indexing which they found “too scientific.” (Jessee, Zembrzycki, High, p. 3). 

To clip or not to clip? To transcribe or to index? Text verses audio verses video. I have heard all sides of the all of these arguments. When it comes to digital skills the DIY attitude is about whether the individual can use Microsoft Word or Adobe Audition, however with usage it is about how people research and their preferences when it comes to consuming knowledge, which can be a very personal affair. To start with people might have a physical or learning disability which restricts how they can research. People also have different learning styles. (Marcy) I, for example am a visual and audio learner, which means that I struggle with reading, and if there is the option consume the information through a documentary or podcast I will take it. People also have different motivations to access an oral history. An oral history is a multilayered artefact, a cornucopia of stories, which holds information that can be useful to a wide range of people from different fields of work and research. However, many of these softwares are created at universities: Stories Matter at Concordia University, Project Jukebox at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and OHMS at the University of Kentucky. These softwares will undoubtedly be influence by the environments in which they were made. In the case of Stories Matter the software was explicitly made for oral historians by oral historians, which is a pretty exclusive attitude. This also reenforces digital inequalities as Van Dijk says that the biggest digital divide in terms of usage is between those who have a higher education and those who do not. (p. 8)

It is not particularly radical to conclude that everyone is a unique being that does things in their own way. However, it is very important to remember this when you are designing something, which is exactly what the oral historians involved in these technologies are doing. In his zine, Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World and What We Can Do to Fix It, the designer Mike Monteiro outlines a code of ethics for designers. One of the things included in his code is “a designer does not believe in edge cases”. (p. 37) There is a history in design to have a target audience for your product, this by default means that you also have a non target audience. According to Monteiro this basically means you are marginalising people: you are actively deciding that your product will not be used by other people. He gives the example of Facebook’s real names projects, which affected trans people and people of indigenous backgrounds whose names were not consider “real”. But he also gives examples beyond Silicone Valley of single parent households “who get caught on the edges of ‘both parents must sign’ permission slips”, or voting ballots in America only being in English, excluding those of immigrants who have a right to vote but struggle with English. (p. 38) Within the setting of the oral history technologies I have talked about, the statement “a designer does not believe in edge cases” means that thought needs to be put into the differences between people’s digital skills and their research preferences. This applies both to the creator and the user of the oral history technology. Selecting who you are designing for in statements like “for oral historians by oral historians” is not caring for the edge cases, which in a field like oral history where one of the founding principles was giving a voice to the voiceless is shameful.

Forward to the Past

Imagine if they remade Back to the Future but kept it in the same time settings as before. Marty McFly would then be able to travel to the real 2015 and be thoroughly disappointed that everything kind of look the same accept no one would look him in the eye because they were all looking down at their phones. Imagine the audience’s disappointment when they presented, not with the magical flying car technology of the original movie, but the painful reality of a 2015 where we did not have the technology for hoverboards. Below you can see the interfaces of Project Jukebox in 1990 on the left (Smith, p. 17) and a screenshot of their website in 2021 on the right.

Back to the Future Part Two’s 2015 is the embodiment of the hopeful dream that is so heavily associated with technology. The same magic that can be felt in the papers on the original Project Jukebox which created the interface on the left. The real 2015 was more like the current interface, similar to what came before only now you can view it on a different device. Many people would take one look at the Project Jukebox’s interfaces and roll their eyes. They might ask, why has so little changed in the last 30 years? Hopefully, I have been able to slightly answer that question. Over the last 30 years oral historians have been wrestling with digital technology, searching for the best solution, only to end up penniless, tired and confused with only a few dead links to prove that something might have existed at some time. This might be a slight exaggeration. We have come far in the journey of oral history technology. However, I do wonder if we would not benefit more from looking back on our past, evaluating our failures, acknowledging the maintenance required, and using our old methods and DIY technologies as inspiration for our next creation. Maybe this will be a better way to continue instead of chasing the Back to the Future – esque dream of the perfect oral history technology.

Bibliography

Boyd, D. (2013) “OHMS: Enhancing Access to Oral History for Free” in The Oral History Review. 40(1) pp. 95-106

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

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

Lambert, D. and Frisch, M. (2013) “Digital Curation through Information Cartography: A Commentary on Oral History in the Digital Age from a Content Management Point of View “ in  The Oral History Review. 40(1) pp. 135-153

Marcy, V. (2001) “Adult learning styles: How the VARK learning style inventory can be used to improve student learning” in Perspectives on Physician Assistant Education. 12(2) pp.117-120

Monteiro, M. (2019) Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It. [EBOOK] Mule Design: San Francisco

Schneider, W. (2014) “Oral history in the age of digital possibilities” in Oral History and Digital Humanities ed. D. Boyd and M. Larson. pp. 19 – 33. Palgrave Macmillan: New York

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

Van Dijk, J.A. (2017) “Digital divide: Impact of access” in The international encyclopedia of media effects ed. P. Rössler. pp.1-11. John Wiley & Sons:

OHD_WKS_0129 Creating Space for Voice

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Miro Board

A link to the workshop Miro Board

Workshop Plan

In this workshop the participants will be asked to reflect on which spaces restrict or elevate voice and what elements, methods, or tactics are used to make these spaces. They will be challenged to turn to archives and question how this space handles voice and what it could learn from other spaces. It is a workshop where no idea is a bad idea, and thinking outside of the box is a must. 

All of the activities will be using a miro board to capture what is being said and explored. 

Intro (2 mins)

I will very briefly introduce myself, my project and what we are going to do in the workshop. 

Activity One: What is an archive? (10 mins)

Aim: To break down the symbols and language of the archive

Task: The participants will be deconstruct the archive through the five senses. What doing they see, smell, hear, feel, and taste when they are in an archive or think of when they hear the word ‘archive’?

Activity Two: The Scale of Voice (10 mins)

Aim: To map different spaces on a scale of suppressing the voice to elevating the voice and identifying where people feel they are most listened to 

Task: The participants will be asked to think of the spaces where they feel their voice heard and where they feel their voice is suppressed. Hopefully, spaces from museums to dinner tables to secondary school classrooms to Twitter will be mapped along a scale, which in the end will show us where people feel most comfortable to speak. 

Activity Three: What are these spaces? (10 mins)

Aim: To break down the symbols and language of the spaces where the participants feel their voice is most elevated 

Task: Just like the first task the participants will deconstruct the space where they feel the most listened to through the five senses. What doing they see, smell, hear, feel, and taste when they are in these spaces? Depending on the number of people participating each space can be tackled consecutively if there are not many participants or in break out rooms where each rooms breaks down a different space.

Activity Four: What now archive? (15 mins)

Aim: To generate ideas and concepts that could transform the archive into a space more like those where people feel heard

Task: The participants will be invited to compare and contrast the experiences of archives and the spaces dissected in the previous activity, and use this as inspiration to create concepts and ideas that could make archives into a more voice friendly space. 

Final thoughts (What ever time is left)

At this point people can ask questions, add any additional thoughts and ideas to the miro board, and generally reflect on the workshop as a whole.

OHD_LST_0128 experiments

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In an attempt to create order in the chaos of my mind I thought that it would be helpful to also write all the ideas I have thoughout this process alongside all the questions, insights I have.

The Shelter for Phantom Voices

This idea came to me while I was doing a podcasting workshop (26/04/21 – 27/04/21). Combining the Last Archive podcast and the book Imaginary Museum and then ripping them off, I decided to make the Shelter for Phantom Voices: home of oral history. I thought it would be a good idea to used different oral history projects to illustrate the various challenges and opportunities that can be found in the field of oral history.

I don’t know whether I’ll make it into a podcast or just keep it as a mind palace for myself but either way it is a fun way to think about it.

Pop-Up Archive

I was zooming with Emma because we need our bi-weekly PhD vent. She had been busy with ethics forms which was driving her crazy and I had been thinking about reusing archives (duh). This combination led us to brain storm how you can make an archive pandemic and power-cut proof, while also sticking to GDPR regulations. Our conclusion, a pop-up archive where you can simply hear the oral histories live from the people without any recording. You see if there isn’t a document you do not need to worry about GDPR, power cuts or pandemics because the archive lives within the people. Inspired by oral tradition of Anansi the histories live within the generations through pop up archives. No collection, no storage problems.

PhD student seeking…

Since my roots lie with fine art and I am a strong believer in art as a frontier of exploration, I find it fitting that I should start this project with some type of collaboration with art students. I imagine this would involve me commissioning artists to create pieces that explore the ideas of: sustainability, audience participation, legacy, evolution, story telling, manipulation etc. Should be fun.

Continuing this idea but expanding it to software developers and architects.

The diverse feminist experience

I am currently (21/07/20) watching the drama series Mrs. America, which is about the ERA (equal right amendment) in 1970s America and the women who are both for and against it. The drama demonstrates perfectly how difficult it is for feminist unity because everyone has different life experiences. Women of colour have a different story to white women, young and old differ, lesbians and straights, rich and poor. It is a mess and the exact reason that when my brother asks why can’t women do what #blacklivesmatter protesters do, I reply with it’s just too complicated.

However what this particular situation offers is an extreme situation and extreme situations are very helpful in the case of designing something (Tim Brown, Change by Design). With this in mind I believe that an experiment involving the various opinions of a diverse group on the topic of feminism could provide an exceptional interesting source of footage. Something that could possibly be edited to fit any point of view.

I therefore imagine collecting this in a Photo Booth set up on, lets say, the university grounds and then later inviting people to create their own interpretation of the footage.

I think the aim of the experiment would be to see if you can edit any footage to fit your opinion even if you have collected a wide range of opinions.

Alternatively…

I could make a set up where you can answer a question and leave a question. Like a chain of opinions. Completely random. Could be a website or an installation of some kind.

OHD_PRS_0127 Only Time Will Tell: the ethical dilemma of oral histories

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This one has been my favourite paper to present so far. I think it was really fun and people seemed to enjoy it.

Brainstorming

Slides

Script

[slide 1]

I am going play two sound recordings which both discuss abortion, so if you think this might upset you I invite you to mute your computer and after I have played them I will signal in the chat that you can unmute. 

(Plays segment from Redstockings Abortion Speakout, March 21, 1969, New York City and the anti-abortion film “Silent scream”) 

[slide 2]

The first clip we listened to was from the Redstockings Abortion Speakout, which took place on the 21st March 1969 in New York City. The second clip was from the anti-abortion film “Silent scream” made in 1984. 

[slide 3]

Both are featured an episode of the podcast “the Last Archive” made by historian Jill Lepore. In this podcast Lepore is trying to work out who killed truth and in this specific episode she discusses how the concept of “speaking your truth” that was used at the Redstockings’s Speakout contributed to creating the post-truth era we live in now. The whole podcast, but especially this episode haunted me whenever I started writing this paper. I would try to add it in but it did not really work, so in the end I extracted this haunting from my brain by writing

[slide 4]

 “speak your truth” on a post-it and popping it in the corner of my blackboard. I am going to do a similar thing now and 

[slide 5]

just leave a digital post-it in the corner of my presentation. 

[slide 6]

I realised that the title of my presentation is a rather ambitious, so I would like to make some amendments to in order to better frame what I am going to talk about.

[slide 7]

(Only Time Will Tell: the ethical dilemma of reusing oral histories in low risk contexts that DO NOT involve children or venerable adults, animals, topics of war, crime, drugs or sex etc.)

I am specifically looking at how to encourage reusing oral histories and the case study I am basing my research on is the National Trust property Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland, which I assume will produce relatively low-risk oral histories.

[slide 8]

In this presentation I am going to map out the basic relationship between ethics and oral history that I imagine I will experience during these next three years. 

[slide 9]

Here we see a timeline of the life of an oral history. 

[slide 10]

At the start we have our oral historian, who wishes to conduct an oral history project. 

[slide 11]

This is the beginning of the oral history’s life. Already from the start this oral history is affected by something I am going to call 

[slide 12]

“experiential noise”. I am using this term to refer to how a person perceives the world at that moment in time, which is influenced by everything from what is in the news to whether they were hugged enough as a child. I specially use the word noise because I find it to be a very nebulous and volatile feeling. Here is a quick example of experiential noise in action. 

[slide 13]

This is a picture of someone hugging their grandparent: before the pandemic this would have be a lovely picture of intergenerational love, however now you hope that the grandparent has had both their jabs. 

[slide 14]

The oral historian’s experiential noise affects the oral history straight away. Lynn Abrams, refers to this as her “research frame” and discusses in the Transformation of Oral History how her position as a “university lecturer in women’s and gender history” influenced her interviewees testimonies when she did a project on women’s life experiences during the 1950s and 1960s. 

[slide 15]

The next step in the life of the oral history is to get ethical approval. How to gain this differs between institutions. I have completed my first ethical approval for my low-risk project and it was relatively painless. I consider myself lucky. 

[slide 16]

Clutching its ethical approval the oral history moves on to meet the interviewee, who has plenty of experiential noise. 

[slide 17]

The interviewee’s experiential noise is very complicated because they are the ones who are remembering. Memory is messy and potentially all sorts of confabulation, misremembering and gaps can appear during the process. 

Now we have all this noise that is being supplied by the interviewer and interviewee, but as soon as the record button is pressed all of it is frozen. 

[slide 18]

Stopped. Now we move onto a really important step for my project. The recording can now be archived, which means that it can then be reused and reusing is the thing I am focusing on. 

[slide 19]

But we must not forget to consult the consent form, that is the appropriate permissions and clearances, which if I am being honest have no idea of:

  1. I haven’t done it yet
  2. It’s different for everyone
  3. GDPR is confusing

[slide 20]

But let us say for the sake of the story that it has been stored and is available. 

[slide 21]

Our little oral history can happily nestle between all the others holding its consent form and ethical approval close to its heart. 

[slide 22]

Some time has passed and along comes a researcher/listener. Being a pestilent human means they are full of new fresh experiential noise. Once they and the experiential noise come in contact with the oral history three things can happen:

[slide 23]

Option one:

[slide 24]

The listener listens to the oral history, goes on to write an account of why things changed or stayed the same with a full understanding of the context in which the oral history was created and the experiential noise that was present. 

[slide 25]

Option two: 

[slide 26]

Because of their experiential noise the listener listens back to the oral history and is shocked by what they hear and goes on to write something about the interviewee that is not flattering. Joanna Bornat recalls a situation where the testimonies of white Australian housewives, who initially had been interviewed about domesticity, were used to illustrate racism in 20th Century. Having their oral histories used in this way was not something the interviewees had agreed to when they gave permission for their oral history to be archived. It also suggests, as did the housewives, that racism has a history. They believed and said things then that they would not believe and say now.

[slide 27]

Option three:

[slide 28]

Again because of their experiential noise the listener listens back to the oral history and is shocked by what they hear because they are surprised that this is allowed to be public. Our relationship with privacy has changed a lot over the last few decades, as has the relationship between researcher and researched. An example of this could be when the historians Peter Jackson, Graham Smith and Sarah Olive, reused the testimonies found in the archive, the Edwardians. Theyfound that the interviewers had included field notes on the interviewees that contained information that definitely would not pass an ethics review or board these days. 

[slide 29]

In both option two and three the ethical approval and the consent to use form no longer matched up with the oral history, because the reception of the oral history had changed. The words said have not changed but their meaning has. The passage of time has not just changed the experiential noise of the listener/researcher but the whole of society’s. This is not surprising as language changes all the time, just think of the word 

[slide 30]

literally or zoom. 

This is why oral histories are so difficult to archive and write ethics for. 

[slide 31] 

The best way I can describe it is like one of those toys where you have to put right shape through the right hole. 

[slide 32]

Only in the case of oral histories the shape keeps changing.

So what do we do now?

Well I offer three options:

[slide 33]

Option one:

[slide 34]

Stop recording oral histories, stop archiving them, stop asking money for them. It’s just going to be an ethical mess. Stop it. 

Now I am going to go on a whim here and assume this probably is not what people are looking for. 

[slide 35]

Option two:

[slide 36]

We can try and improve our ethics forms to accommodate its noisy nature. Maybe if we make a system that forces us to annually update our ethics and consent forms we can keep up with the noise. Now considering how much time and effort already goes into ethics I imagine that this option is also not realistic. It reminds me of Wendy Rickard writing in her paper Oral history – ‘more dangerous than therapy’ that she wishes that more interviewees and interviewers could listen back to their tapes, but that this is simple not possible due to lack of resources – “it seems you have to be rich to be ethical”. 

[slide 37]

Option three:

[slide 38]

To start with we do more reusing. According to Michael Frisch within oral history there is a preference to record interviews instead of reuse them. This results in less information on the process of reusing. Which is why I am suggesting that we reuse more so we can learn more about it. The more we revisit, the more we can reflect, the faster we can pick up on ethical misdemeanours or challenges and the more we can improve the process of recording, archiving and reusing oral histories. We need to become more practiced in reusing and learn more about the ethical pitfalls of reuse. It is important to keep telling these histories that people have worked hard for to capture, but this also means we need to keep the shop tidy. Sometimes we might make a mistake but then it is our responsibility as a community to fix it and grow. 

[slide 39]

We are never going to be able to write the perfect ethics form. Time affects how we experience oral history so we need to find something that is as stubborn and relentless as time which I believe is 

[slide 40]

us (the human race)—the vessels of experiential noise and the deciders of 

[slide 41] 

“what is ethical?”. 

[slide 42]

Like our history, our ethics change with us because it lives within us, so trying to shove all the nebulous responsibility onto a single static document does not make sense. So for now we might just have to hustle though because only time will tell if we are doing it right. 

[slide 43]

But there is one more thing… 

[slide 44]

The post-it note. “Speak your truth”. 

So after I had finished planing this paper, I stared at the post-it note for while contemplating its existence. Eventually I concluded that the option three, where we embrace reusing and all its messiness was really scary. In this post-truth world where everyone “speaks their truth” and does not listen to each other it is terrifying to simple get on with and keep going. As an oral historian you could ruin someone’s life because you allowed public access to their testimony and someone completely misused it. You could write something and be “cancelled” or “trolled” for your opinions. Or you can have your funding cut by your government because the narrative your telling is not what they want to hear. 

[slide 45]

Initially I was going to end it here in a slightly depressing way, but I sent my draft to my supervisor who said that I might be over-worrying a little bit. His words reminded me of something my old neighbour used to say, something that I think is important when you do pretty much anything in live including research: 

[slide 46]

“all perfect must go to Allah so if you want to keep your rug you have to make a little mistake”

OHD_PRS_0126 Oral History’s Design

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This presentation was only 3 minutes. There were some lovely archive nerds in the audience.

Slides

Script

[slide one]

What do this lamp, this corkscrew and the iPod have in common? 

Other than the fact that they are all very colourful,  they also all radically changed the meaning of their use in comparison to their predecessors.

[slide two]

Lamps are there to illuminate a room and look pretty. 

But Yang LED was made to adapt to the mood of resident and is not even meant to be seen.

[slide three]

Corkscrews are there to open my wine

But this corkscrew by Alessi “dances” for you.

[slide four]

Portable music players allowed you to listen to music on the move. 

But the iPod allowed you to cheaply buy songs from iTunes and then curate them into your own personal soundtrack. 

[slide five]

All three of these examples and their respective change in meanings are the result of design-driven innovation a term used by the design scholar Roberto Verganti in a book by the same name. 

Design-driven innovation works like this… 

[slide six]

Here on this graph we have two axis: change in technology and a change in meaning both have a scale from incremental to radical change. In the corner we have market pull/user-centered design. 

[slide seven]

Here we have the bubble design-driven innovation, where see radical change in meaning and the bubble technological push where there is radical change in technology. 

In this yellow part where there is a radical change in meaning but not in technology we find designs like alessi’s corkscrew. 

In this blue section we find technologies like the first mp3 player, which was a significant technological upgrade from portable cassette and cd players. 

Now in this green part we find the iPod. 

[slide eight]

This is green part is what Verganti refers to as a technological epiphany. 

[slide nine]

My PhD is in collaboration with the National Trust property Seaton Delaval Hall. This property wishes to create an oral history archive and the reason that I started this presentation by talking about the now obsolete iPod is because just like Apple did in 2001 I would also like to achieve a 

[slide ten]

technological epiphany. 

[slide eleven]

Presently archives are very busy digitising their collections which is great especially during the pandemic. 

[slide twelve]

However this push to digitise fall very much in the blue technological push category. Everyone else is online so archives better move there too. The result of this however is websites that look like this. 

[slide thirteen]

Not particularly sexy or even that helpful. 

[slide fourteen]

What I want to do with my project is actually stop and think about how this technology could actually change the meaning of archiving. 

[slide fifteen]

Venganti describes the many ways one can achieve this but it all boils down to doing a lot of talking across disciplines. 

[slide sixteen]

How would a graphic designer redesign this page? How does the PhD student feel when they are in an archive? How would an environmentalist make a sustainable archive? How do game designers handle information? Many questions, a lot of information and hopefully a change in what it means to archive. 

OHD_PRS_0125 Oral History’s Design: Sustaining visitor (re)use of oral histories on heritage sites

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On 26 March I presented my first paper during a series of Digital Heritage Workshops organised by Lancaster University and IIT Indore. It was really scary and weird. I didn’t feel looked after at all. I also presented something that had already been discussed by previous speakers. Anyway you live and learn.

Script

This is Seaton Delaval Hall. Built in the 1720s the hall and its residents, the ‘Gay Delavals’ became renowned for wild parties and other shenanigans. In 1822 the hall went up in flames severely damaging the property. This history is represented very well in the collection that is housed at the hall which is now run by the National Trust. 

What is less represented is the more recent history. The community that looked after the hall after it burnt it down, when it was a prisoner of war camp during both wars and later when the late Lord Hastings invited the local people to parties after its restoration. 

This history lives within the local community. Luckily we have the wonderful field of oral history that allows us to capture this predominately undocumented history.

However oral history has a deep dark secret. After recordings have been made and analysed, they are locked into an archive or into a historians cupboard and never heard from again. They are like a box of unwatched home videos. 

This in the context of Seaton Delaval hall seems sad as its strength as an institution lies within its deep connection with its surrounding area. It would therefore be a shame if the community who gave these histories cannot access them. I also personally think this to be ethical dubious as the lack of access to these oral histories brings up issues of power inequality where an institution like the National Trust happily takes the oral histories but not giving something in return. 

SO this is the challenge: we want to make oral histories reusable for the visitors of the hall. 

To make the rather complex problem more tangible I have focused in on the idea of sustainability:

I would like to point out here that I am using the term storage system instead of archive because I feel that the idea of the archive is very loaded and cultural represented as not particularly accessible to the masses. 

Let’s start with the visitors and volunteers. This particular group, especially the volunteers, are the people who will contribute and donate their oral histories to the hall. Now because of the standard time and financial constraints the period of recording will not be able to capture all the stories. So this system that will house the the initial recordings needs to be dynamic and sustainable enough for the visitors and volunteers to keep adding and reflecting on the history.

For the staff the term sustainability addresses user friendliness. It needs to be easy for a new staff to learn how the system is use and managed. 

This is where I believe the digital can help. 

The digital as we are all fully aware has the amazing capacity to allow people from across world to upload, download, browse all sorts of content. It’s awesome. Also as time goes on more and more people are getting familiar with the digital sphere. Especially with the pandemic which forced to many use it more. This is not just individuals but also the case for most institutions notably those in the culture sector who have been very busy trying stay afloat by working out how they can use all these digital tools to keep their audience. The digital and its tools have become and are increasingly becoming part of everyday life. 

The dynamic and sustainable requirement of the system, where people can easily add information and stories is pretty covered by basic digital systems. 

The user friendliness can be achieved if the staff are involved right at the beginning with the design of the system. Allowing it to mould to the staff’s digital habits and knowledge.

What the digital can also help the staff with is storage. The digital is able to store documents in also sorts of formats and in all sorts of locations. I personally find that the internets ability to duplicate (think memes) might be a possible tool that could help storage issues but that simultaneously brings up all sorts ethical issues around permissions and copyright. 

However what the digital also has done is created this desperate need to record and store everything and therefore also a huge sense of loss when something isn’t captured. Because as you are able to capture and store something you also create a whole bunch of things that arent captured and therefore lost. Technology has always played a huge role in this, just look at the field of oral history which relies completely on the ability to record someone’s voice. So then the question is should we record everything? Do we need to record everything? It’s tempting when you can record everything. But then you have everything and that is also useless because you cannot reuse everything. One of the archivists at the Parliamentary Archives once told me that they had calculated how long it would take for them and their colleague to digitise everything and it was 120 years. This paradox brings up issues around value. What do we value? Whose voices do we value? But an even bigger problem is what will we value?

This one of the bigger I imagine we will be dealing with in the next couple of years. Trying to keep the digital eco system healthy and not complete collapse under its own weight. 

The digital is still very young. Which is proven by what it can do really enthusiastically like record everything and allow everyone to contribute. But it is also proven by the gaps that has. For example many search functions on online archives are difficult to use and don’t deliver that same serendipitous feeling that brick and mortar archive has. A search bar is not close to being the same as an archivist who knows the collection. Robots are not completely ready to replace humans just yet. For now humans will have to fill in the gaps that the digital has. 

A good example of this blend of human and digital is that people who are unable to do their research because they cannot go into archives or the digitisation of the document they are interested in is not good enough. What I have seen many people do now is use their human network to access these documents by ringing people up and asking them take pictures of documents. I thought this was a funny cyborg-y moment where people needed both technology and a human person to achieve their goal. 

So what we are looking at is how the digital can support the needs of humans at Seaton Delaval Hall by adapting to their needs. But at the same the humans are free and able to fill in these gaps that are present in the digital. 

However there is one more layer I would like to add to this challenge of building a sustainable storage system. And that is the environment. Our environment heavily influences whether we can access archives. A pandemic can shut us off from the brick and mortar archives. A power cut can take down the servers where the digital archive stored. Or an earth quake or storm can destroy both completely. 

This in addition to digital gaps is why I do not believe that it is sustainable to solely relay on either a digital or a brick and mortar storage system. A system that floats between these two worlds and at its centre has the humans that are reason for its existence, that I believe is the closest we might get to having something sustainable. Something that will allow Seaton Delaval Hall and its community continue telling stories for generations to come. 

Slides

OHD_PRS_0124 Presentation/Interview

Below is the presentation I had to do in order to be chosen as the student to complete this PhD. The interview took place on Feb 18th 2020 and the question I had to answer was, “What are the key challenges and opportunities [in this PhD] and how will you address them?”

SLIDE ONE

I have set this presentation up as a Venn diagram of three main parties of this CDA: National Trust and the heritage sector, Oral history and Design. In order to answer your question, I will navigate through the various sections of the Venn diagram identifying opportunities, challenges and how will address them. 

SLIDE TWO

I think the first opportunity lies with the National Trust property Seaton Delaval Hall. If you observe the setting and history of the Hall you will find it to be the appropriate setting for this CDA. Firstly, the Hall is in the middle of a wide and rich community. Over hundreds of years the Hall and its inhabitants have contributed to this community and return the community has also given back with the most recent example being the money that was raise to help the National Trust take over the property. Secondly, it is a relatively young National Trust property. By that I mean that it has only been acquired by the National Trust in the last 11 years, meaning that until very recently; stories, memories and histories were being made at the Hall. Seaton Delaval Hall is therefore a perfect candidate for any oral history project, however a recent collaboration between the National Trust and MA in Multidisciplinary Innovation at Northumbria University makes the Hall the perfect location for this CDA.

SLIDE THREE

In May 2019 as part of the Rising Stars Project the National Trust came to Northumbria University with hope to collaborate in setting up a new oral history project. I was part of the team on the Multidisciplinary Innovation MA that was given the challenge of creating a new, an innovative method for collecting, archiving and displaying oral history. We started off by investigating methods of collecting group memories, as at first we found the National Trust’s current prescribed method of collecting oral history too formulaic. We concluded that due to the aforementioned setting of the Hall there should be a focus on reengaging the local community through this oral history programme. So we wanted to create a more participatory type of oral history that reveal a bigger picture of the Hall and created a sense of collective ownership of these histories. Instead of the “rather odd social arrangement” of the one-to-one interview, as Smith describes it in Beyond Individual / Collective Memory: Women’s Transactive Memories of Food, Family and Conflict, the team wanted to lay the power of the narrative with the participants instead of the interviewer. What we wanted to avoid is what the historian Lynn Abrams experienced while working on a project about women’s life experience in the 1950s and 60s. During that project she found that her position as an expert in women’s and gender history and implied feminist meant that her participants adapted their story to fit the wider feminist narrative. However, as our project progressed and the team dove further into oral history theory we started to understand the importance of individual interviews. Especially because during the testing of our group interviews we found that some people were less comfortable with the group setting and therefore would contribute less.

SLIDE FOUR

So, after three months of research, designing, testing, refining and testing again we developed two new group-interview methods alongside an incorporated individual interview. We also created several ways to display oral histories around the property, and potential new methods of archiving oral histories. Despite the high level of outputs the project only really scratched the surface, however it gave the opportunity for this CDA to exist in the first place. I view this project as the launchpad for this CDA. What it did was start an exploration into collective ownership and the role of community within the context of oral history at Seaton Delaval Hall and it brought together the various parties sitting here today. But most importantly it revealed that it would require more time and effort for it to be successful. This is especially the case with archiving, which was purposefully left open ended by the team, because as we producing all the previously mention outputs we discovered that oral history archiving is a very difficult problem. 

SLIDE FIVE

Micheal Frisch discusses difficult problem this extensively in his paper ‘Three Dimensions and More’. He describes oral history archives as a shoebox of unwatched family videos and outlines various paradoxes that occurs in oral history archives. One of the paradoxes, the Paradox of Orality, refers to the inappropriateness of the reliance on transcripts in the context of oral history. Many oral historians, including Alessandro Portelli, agree that using transcripts in archiving reduces and distorts what was originally communicated by the interviewee. Although there are many archives that rely on transcripts, there are also archiving systems being developed that tackle this exact issue. Certain systems are already engaging with this paradox by using various forms of technology. Such as the Shoah Visual History Foundation, set up by the film director Steven Spielberg, where video testimonies of holocaust survivors are indexed, timestamped in English and can be navigated along multiple pathways. Another example is Oral History Metadata Sychronizer (OHMS) created at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries, which can be navigated by searching any word and it will jump to the exact moment that person is talking about the searched word (Boyd). I imagine throughout the CDA these systems, including the more analogue archives need to be explored further in order to uncover the opportunities for innovation. What we are specifically looking for is the opportunity to create a system that is not driven by technological advancements, but by a desire to change the culture of how we use archives. 

SLIDE SIX

Currently, we use all types for archives in a static way, which is the opposite to how we treat history. Not only are we constantly making new history through the passage of time, our attitudes towards history constantly changes. For example the global discussion surrounding artefacts in the British Museum or even attitudes towards mining. Recently I worked with the arts and education charity Hand Of at the Durham Miners Hall with children from the local area. Working with these children you see that they view mining through a completely different lens to the generation that came before. While you and I might associate mining with the miners’ strike and the deindustrialisation of the UK, these children view mining as something from the pass, something important to the previous communities but ultimately something unsustainable and bad for the environment.

The static nature of the archives is in complete contradiction to how people experience history. I believe this CDA is looking for is a more sustainable and dynamic preservation of stories. A system that taps into the ever changing zeitgeist reflected in its visitors instead of keeping everything frozen in time. 

Well the CDA is called the ‘Oral history Design’. In my eyes I see design the provider of tools for exploration, with Seaton Delaval Hall providing the test subjects. This CDA would not be possible if it was not for the resources that the National Trust has to offer. Those resources being the visitors, the volunteers, those who provide the histories and the team working at Seaton Delaval. I believe that in order to create a system that is truly sustainable it needs to be tested at every point of the process and the collaboration with the National Trust gives us that opportunity. 

SLIDE NINE

The challenge however is finding the appropriate design tools. Design intervention and the use of design thinking tools can deliver high rewards but it can also cause considerable damage if not use responsibly. Not only do I expect to do more research into design methods on top of the ones I am already familiar with. I also expect to constantly be reviewing, adapting and modifying the tools and design process as project progresses. This is something that is highly encouraged by many people in the field of including the Kelley brothers, from IDEO, who openly invite people to adapt their methods and Natascha Jen from Pentagram, who argues that design thinking is more of a mindset, not a diagram or tool. Within this CDA this might evolved into regular reflection on the process both from myself as the student and from the other parties involved. All of this is especially important because the collaboration between design and oral history is a relatively new and unexplored territory.

SLIDE TEN

This unexplored territory, however gives the CDA opportunity to explore something in addition to the creation of a new archiving system; the methodology behind cross-disciplinary work within the academy. Cross-disciplinary work is nebulous and struggles to be categorised within the academic system. As I found throughout my MA there is a lot literature that talks about interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary work. These papers, books and articles talk about bringing various parties together in order to solve a problem but it is nearly always in the context of business or social enterprise. The CDA will therefore offer us the opportunity to research and experience multidisciplinary or cross-disciplinary work within the context of a university. 

However, cross-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary work, whatever you would like to name it, does come with its fair share of challenges. I am familiar with this as during my MA I had to work in an 18-strong team of people from a diverse range of ages, ethnicities, nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds and different fields of work. Throughout the year it was clear that one of our biggest barriers was communicating across these differences. It often felt like I was speaking a completely different language, which sometimes was the case, as certain ambiguous words were perceived differently depending on the person’s background. I predict this to happen throughout the CDA, not only across the design and oral history but also with the National Trust and any additional parties that might be involved. 

SLIDE ELEVEN

It is essential that we have as many of these cross-disciplinary conversations as possible. Roberto Verganti, in his book Design-driven Innovation, refers to these types of cross-disciplinary conversations as a ‘design discourse’ – experts from different backgrounds exchanging information. Verganti finds this to be essential in design-driven innovation, an innovation strategy that pursues change through a reinvention of the meaning of a product or system instead of relying of technology. Which is exactly what this CDA is looking for. 

This design discourse needs to be managed and organised efficiently, which I feel confident I am capable of doing due to working in teams throughout my professional and academic work. Especially thanks to my MA and my work with Hand Of and teaching for the early English programme Such Fun! I know the importance of clear communication and disciplined organisation. I imagine that I as the student of this CDA, I will have to take a project manager-esque role in order to float between the different disciplines, communicating progress and finally managing expectations. 

SLIDE TWELVE 

And that really is the crux of it all, managing expectations, because you cannot guarantee anything. For all we know the answer to design oral history archives is – don’t, National Trust’s prescribed archiving method of electronic cascading files does the job perfectly well. For now this CDA is exploring the unknown, but that is what I like about it. I spent three years in a Goldsmiths art studio exploring the unknown, then I did an MA do to more targeted exploration of the unknown and now I have a narrow it down again in applying for this CDA. Exploring the unknown is full of opportunities and challenges, but you have to do it in order to find them and I very much like to do it. 

The feedback a got on my presentation was good, however I did not do as well on answering the questions. This is a completely fair judgement as I felt slightly unprepared. I think it is important that I start planning out the steps I will be taking throughout the three years and deadlines for certain outputs.

OHD_LST_0123 questions

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Here is a collection of questions I have asked myself concerning the topic of my PhD both big and small.

How do we handle the racism that exists in the archives? Date: 16/06/2020

What do we do with unused interviews? Date: 19/06/2020

Do we need to reevaluate how we create oral historians in order to ensure more equality within the sector? Date: 16/06/2020

What is the difference between a documentary and an oral history project or article? Are they not both curated equally? Is the only true form of oral history stuck unedited in the archives? Date: 20/07/2020

How can we utilise Gen z and the digital natives in oral history archives? What might the pitfalls be? Date: 21/07/2020

Do I have a problem with the word history in the context of oral history interviews? Date: 21/07/2020

Are there any aural oral history papers? If so where are they and why aren’t there more of them Date: 01/10/2020

How does the archive function in a ‘knowledge/data’ economy? Date: 23/10/2020

Do filters for the public limit or increase accessibility? Date: 23/10/2020

Are we looking for an ‘archive’ or a completely new system? Date: 23/10/2020

What should an archive be like during an pandemic? Date: 08/02/2021

How does “Material History” work in the context of oral history? Date: 08/02/2020

Do we get bogged down in the ethics? Date: 16/02/2021

What is our relationship to the ‘public’? Date: 16/02/2021

What does digitization replace? Date: 10/03/2021

Are result lists the problem when it comes to searching? Date: 12/02/2020

What does it mean if people can’t remember? When people are scared of not being able to remember? Date: 16/03/2021

Where does intertextuality and oral history theory end and academic snobbism begin? Date: 16/03/2021

Is having an oral history recorded like donating your body to science? Date: 16/03/2021

What do the interviewees think about reuse? Date: 16/03/2021

How do we take stuff back to the interviewee? Date: 16/03/2021

How do you build a community? Can you build a community? Or do they only grow naturally? What is the balance between setting up/designing a community and having one naturally occur? Date: 30/04/2021

Can the digital ever be transparent if those who make it are from one exclusive group? Date: 11/05/2021

Do we trust archives? Date: 11/05/2021

Does our idea of original need to change? Date: 11/05/2021

Can you democratise history outside of a democracy? Date: 07/05/2021

OHD_PRS_0122 Staying flexible: how to build an oral history archive

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The second conference paper I presented. This one went better than the first one so that is positive.

Slides

Script

[slide two]

This is Seaton Delaval Hall. This National Trust property can be found in Northumberland just up the coast from Newcastle. Built in the 1720s the hall and its residents, the ‘Gay Delavals’ became renowned for wild parties and other shenanigans. 

[slide three]

In 1822 the hall went up in flames severely damaging the property. This history is well represented in the collection that is housed at the hall. 

[slide four]

What is less represented, however, is the hall’s more recent history: the community that looked after the hall after it burnt it down, the prisoner of war camps, and the medieval themed parties that the late Lord Hastings threw after the hall’s restoration. 

For my PhD I will attempt to solve this issue of missing history by building an oral history archive. Oral history is a tool that has been employed many times to help represent the underrepresented in history. The challenge however is to build an archive with these oral histories. To help me explain how I am approaching this challenge I will use a metaphor.

[slide five]

This is a Ferrero Rocher. Through this yummy treat I will attempt to explain my project and the various layers of the process that need to be considered and analysed in order to be able to build an affective oral history archive.

[slide six]

The Hazelnut AKA a new storage system

The metaphorical hazelnut and core of this project is this storage system that will hold the oral histories I record. Why do I call it a storage system and not archive? I say this for three reasons, firstly because archives and oral history recordings are not the best of friends. 

[slide seven]

The original framework that we use to structure and build archives is, and has always been, based around archiving mostly written documents. Searching through this type of material is easy because their content is visually apparent. These days you can, if they have been digitise, word search the documents very easily. 

[slide eight]

Oral histories recordings (not the transcripts) struggle to fit into this framework, because their content can only be accessed if you sit down and listen to them. Listening back to these recordings can take a lot of time and can be hindered by outdated technology. This mismatch between the material and the place where it is stored often discourages people to reuse oral histories.

[slide nine]

I think the oral historian Micheal Frisch puts it best when he called oral history archives “a shoebox of unwatched home videos.” The content is there but the viewing a specific moment is an arduous task. Mining the hall’s community for stories and throwing them into a shoebox is exactly what I want to avoid with this PhD. 

[slide ten]

At Seaton Delaval Hall I want to create a storage system that broadens access to and actively encourages reuse of the oral histories, in order to support the community that has looked after the hall for so many years.

The second reason I say storage system instead of archive is ….

[slide eleven]

because currently archives are struggling with adapting to advancing technology. In recent years there has been a push to digitise archives with the COVID-19 pandemic giving this process an exceptional boost. 

[slide twelve]

However, this digitisation requires a lot of resources like money, time and manpower that many archives, especially smaller ones, simply do not have. 

[slide thirteen] 

In addition, what this push to digitise does, which it does in many sectors, is attempt to replace a human with a robot, who in my opinion is simply not up to the task. Typing into a search bar is not the same as asking an archivist for help. 

[slide fourteen]

While a search bar is a tool one uses when researching, the archivist becomes a fellow researcher, making room for far more flexible and creative exploration. 

[slide fifteen]

Thirdly, archives are rather static in comparison to the world outside of their brick and mortar walls. 

[slide sixteen]

Especially in the last year there has been increasing pressure to review how we present our history as a society. This dynamic debate is not reflected in the way we store our historical documents. 

[slide seventeen]

This limited reviewing and updating of our archives actually makes it harder to do research. The most obvious instance being how certain keywords become outdated over time, which is something that is especially prominent in the archiving of minorities’s histories such as LGBTQA+ and Black history. 

[slide eighteen]

The way we traditionally build an archive does not fit with contemporary society. Archives were initial set up to preserve one view of history in one type format. They did not leave room for new technologies and new points of view. Now, archives are attempting to change this by rather awkwardly moving into the digital space without truly questioning how these digital tools affect the archiving process and researching in archives. 

In order to create a new storage system I wish to let go of these traditions, these symbols and languages that we use to navigate oral histories, archives and the digital. 

[slide nineteen]

I want to start with a blank canvas and build a storage system that not only reflects the technology and views found in society but also makes room for any further developments in these areas. Now, the next question is: how we might go about building this new system?

[slide twenty]

The chocolate filling AKA working together without killing each other

[slide twenty-one]

AKA collaborating! A truly fabulous buzzword that works very well in funding applications but in reality is really difficult to do. Why? Well, every field of research has its own type of 

[slide twenty-two]

‘disciplinary upbringing.’ 

[slide twenty-three]

When I say ‘disciplinary upbringing’ I am referring to the lens that each field views things like language and methods of work through. In other words the 

[slide twenty-four]

‘here we do things this way’ attitude. 

[slide twenty-five]

When people collaborate across disciplines they bring this lens, this disciplinary upbringing, with them so when the work starts everyone is viewing the challenge through separate and different lenses. This can lead to a lot clashes and plenty confusion.

So how do you solve this? 

[slide twenty-six]

You could just say that people should leave their disciplinary upbringing at the door but that never works. 

[slide twenty-seven]

Instead I intend on using these disciplinary upbringings to the advantage of the creative process by encouraging people to be open about them and in some cases even exaggerate them a bit. What this does is bring to light the various

[slide twenty-eight]

‘creative tensions’ that are present in the collaboration. 

[slide twenty-nine]

For example in the context of this project where we have a collaboration between the fields of oral history, design and heritage you can find many creative tensions that are the consequence of differing disciplinary upbringings. 

[slide thirty]

Between oral history and design there is the tension of the medium of communication; historians like writing and designers love a good visual. 

[slide thirty-one]

I can tell you from experience that design and heritage work at dramatically different speeds. One of design’s key philosophies is “fail fast”, which is definitely not something would be mentioned in a National Trust meeting. 

[slide thirty-two]

Finally, between oral history and heritage we find possibly the most challenging of creative tensions, which is differing opinions on the representation of history. 

[slide thirty-three]

It is important to identify these creative tensions because they highlight issues that might have otherwise gone unseen if everyone had just been polite and kept their mouth shut. 

[slide thirty-four]

Once they have been determined they function as a great source of information. This information needs to be drawn out through thorough questioning. It is essential to discover why the tension exists and how it might inform the creative process. 

[slide thirty-five]

This does however mean that sometimes you might have to ask what seem like silly and obvious questions, because your disciplinary upbringing to begin with blocks you from fully understanding where other people are coming from. To complete the questioning to its fullest potential it is necessary to unpack any confusion no matter how small or trivial they might seem. 

[slide thirty-six]

However the most fundamental thing within this chocolate filling of collaboration is — listening. One must always remember that you are not there to defend your disciplinary upbringing, you are there to solve a collective problem. When identifying and questioning creative tensions everyone must listen to all of those collaborating. 

[slide thirty-seven]

Overall the chocolate filling represents something that can be very difficult, but with open minds, questioning and listening can be exceptionally fruitful.

[slide thirty-eight]

The Crunchy shell aka beyond the toolkit 

A Ferrero Rocher is not complete without its crunchy shell and neither would this project. The crunchy shell in this context represents the legacy of the project. It is important to me that the project and the storage system does not end with the completion of this PhD. 

[slide thirty-nine]

In order to avoid this I and everyone involved in the project shall thoroughly question and analyse the process of building this storage system. We need to reflect on what worked and what didn’t work. This questioning needs to be beyond which workshop activity was fun and whether we had enough time. 

[slide forty]

What we need to do is extract questions that will help someone else set up a similar project. So instead of creating a rigid set of instructions with painfully particular processes, we offer future oral history projects questions that they must ask themselves before, during, and after the project. This hopefully will allow them to adapt the process to their needs and encourages them to think more creatively. 

[slide thirty-nine]

Conclusion

Now I completely recognise the irony of me slamming the idea of a rigid sets of instructions and then ending on a how-to guide, but in my defence I had the title before I fully wrote the paper so please forgive me. 

How to build an oral history archive 

  • Let go of your preconceptions of what an archive is (and also what the digital is)
  • Work together by allowing creative tensions to occur and be questioned 
  • Reflect on your process and extract questions for future projects

The true aim of this how-to is to make sure that we do not end up in the same position we are now, where our archives no longer reflect society. The world is only going to get more complicated so if we do not leave room for questioning and change, archives are always going to be behind. This would be a disaster as archives on a macro scale are the keepers of our history and (in theory) hold the foundations of our collective identities as a people. On a more micro scale I have personally always found comfort in how archives keep documents that show everyday humanity, like a postcard to a fellow artist or a writer’s note to a partner. 

So here is my how-to on making an oral history archive. Take it with you, try it out, tell me if it worked. I am going to do the same and probably change it many times in the next three years. 

OHD_WRT_0121 the code/manifesto

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The manifesto below is based off Meirle Laderman Ukeles’ Manifesto for Maintenance Art.

This the code of ethics outlined in by Mike Monterio in Ruined by Design. I am using this as a base for my code of ethics for this project. I have written a summary of each rule and then written in the green text how I might fulfil it.

A designer is first and foremost a human being.

Designers work within the social contract of life. Within their work they need to respect the globe and respect fellow humans. If their work relies on the inequalities in society they are failing as a human and a designer.

This project risks becoming a completely digital affair, which can be alienating to some in society, especially the elderly who make up the majority of this project’s audience. Another large responsibility is making this an eco friendly venture, which in my opinion is essential but not easy.

A designer is responsible for the work they put into the world.

The things designers make, impact people’s lives and have the potential to change society. If a designer creates in ignorance and does not fully consider the impact of their work, whatever damaged then is caused by their work is their responsibility. A designer’s work is their legacy and it will out live them.

This is where I think an oral history project about this project will encourage an awareness around the impact of the design. If one of the first things the archive designed houses is recordings of those would built it, it will show confidence in the work. The legacy of the project will live within the outcome of the project.

A designer values impact over form.

Design is not art. Art lives on fringes of society, design lives bang in the middle of the system of society. It does NOT live in a vacuum. Anything designed lives within this system and will impact it. No matter how pretty it is if it is designed to harm it is designed badly.

Nothing a totalitarian regime designs is well-designed because it has been designed by a totalitarian regime.

M. Monterio ‘The Ethics of Design’ in Ruined by Design

Let’s make it inclusive before we pick out the font. This is especially a rule for me, a former artists.

A designer owes the people who hire them not just their labor, but their counsel.

Designers are experts of their field. Designers do not just make things for customers, they also advise their customers. If the customer wants to create something that will damage the world it is the designer’s job as gatekeeper to stop them. Saying no is a design skill.

The team at the National Trust and the oral history department are (relatively) new to the world of design so it is my job to help them navigate this rather messy world.

A designer welcomes criticism.

Criticism is great. Designers should ask for criticism throughout the design process not only to improve the thing being designed but the designer’s future design process.

Now that I am working between three different parties it is essential that I keep communication open at all ends. The more the merrier attitude must reign.

A designer strives to know their audience.

A designer is a single person with a single life experience, so unless they are designing something solely for themselves they probably cannot fully comprehend complexity of the problems their audience is facing. Therefore it is designers’ responsibility to create a diverse design team, which the audience plays a big role in.

This collaborative project is perfectly set up the fulfil this, as long as COVID-19 does not get in the way.

A designer does not believe in edge cases.

‘Edge cases’ refers to people who the design is NOT target at and therefore cannot use. Designers need to make their design inclusive. Don’t be a dick.

The National Trust has a very particular audience which in some design projects would make them edge cases. In this project I think I need to look at how people with disabilities would use the archive and people who are not native to digital technology.

A designer is part of a professional community.

Each individual designer is an ambassador for the field. If one designer does a bad job then the client will trust the next designer they hire less. It also goes the same way, if a designer refuses to do a job on ethical grounds and then another designer comes along and happily completes the job, then the field becomes divide.

This collaboration between Northumbria University, Newcastle University and the National Trust has the potential to be the start of a series of collaborative projects. It is therefore my responsibility to ensure a positive working relationship with all involved. I need to be aware that I am an ambassador for all the institutions involved.

A designer welcomes a diverse and competitive field.

A designer needs to keep their ego in check and constantly make space for marginalised groups at the table. A designer needs to know when to shut up and listen.

I want to invite everyone to the party. Because the collaboration I have access to all the experts at the university but also at the National Trust. And each institution also has a huge and diverse group of people who can help influence and criticise the work. Think MDI and the volunteers at Seaton Delaval Hall.

A designer takes time for self-reflection.

Throwing away your ethics does not happen in one go, it happens slowly. Therefore constant self-reflection is essential. It needs to be built into each designer’s process.

I started doing this during MDI so now I can build on it. Maybe this website can help me reflect by holding all my thoughts. I should probably also timetable in moments of reflection from the off.

OHD_PRS_0120 The Unseen: Maintenance Labour on Heritage Sites

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// “To invent the sailing ship or steamer is to invent the the shipwreck. To invent the train is to invent the rail accident of derailment. To invent the family automobile is to produce the pile-up on the highway.” (Virilio, P. (2007) The Original Accident. Cambridge: Polity, p. 10) 

// To have an interactive game in your museum is invent the “out of order” sign and 

// to open a heritage site is to invent the tape which communicates “sorry this part of the house is closed due to restoration”. 

// Any creation brings with it everything that could possibly go wrong and also all the things that need to be done ensure things do not go wrong. 

// This includes a curated visitor experience on a heritage site. Many things can go wrong, so there are a lot of things to do to ensure things run smoothly: are there enough volunteers to show visitors around, are the toilets clean, is the cafe well stocked, is the art collection available to view, are the gutters clean so they do not flood in case it rains. And for National Trust sites there is added pressure because the visitor experience also needs adhere with the expectations people have of National Trust sites. 

// The theme of this conference is ‘experience’ and I would like to talk about 

// the labour necessary to allow an experience to be experienced on a heritage site 

// specifically the maintenance labour, and how 

// maintenance labour’s position in society radically influences the running of heritage sites and

//  how this effects the work I am doing with my PhD which is in collaboration with the National Trust property Seaton Delaval Hall. 

// I think we need to start by understanding what maintenance labour is  

// I am going to do by introducing you to three characters with three stories that will help me illustrate the nature of maintenance work and the position it holds in society: Jo, who is part of my supervisory team, the collector and entrepreneur Robert Beerbohm, and the artist Meirle Laderman Ukeles. 

// Jo works for the National Trust as a curator among other things, titles are a bit vague in the Trust so I am not completely clear on what they do, this is also not a picture of them, obviously. They told me a story of when they were walking around a Trust property together with their predecessor. Their predecessor decided to point out some of their biggest achievements, which was not a new cafe or an exhibition but 

// a window frame that look exactly like it did when they started. This is a perfect embodiment of maintenance work, because if the predecessor had not pointed the window frame out to Jo, they admitted that they probably would not have noticed it at all. In this window there is no evidence of the predecessor work, their work is completely invisible which is common for maintenance work. 

// We just expect our streets to not be full of rubbish, the toilets in our buildings to be clean, fresh water to come out of our taps. We often do not see, or wish not to see the effort behind these things. 

// So they live an invisible life until things go wrong, 

// which brings me Robert Beerbohm. 

In the book How Buildings Learn Stewart Brand tells the story of the collector Robert Beerbohm, who had over million dollars’ worth of comic books and baseball cards stored in 

// a warehouse in California. The roof had a known drainage problem but the building owners had not prioritised this to be fixed. One day there was particular heavy rain fall and the roof leaked terribly flooding the entire warehouse, damaging all the collectables. Beerbohm lost everything. 

// If we compare the warehouse to the window in the Trust property, we see how maintenance only becomes visible once it has failed or not been done at all. The window was maintained but there are no traces of the work put in, while the warehouse was not maintained and the results are obvious and catastrophic. Maintenance only becomes visible in a negative way. 

// As Brand says maintenance work is “all about the negative, never about rewards.” If the roof had been fixed and the roof did not collapse Beerbohm would not have technically gain anything but he also would not have lost anything either. He would however not be aware of the lack of loss because nothing happened. All maintenance offers is stability, no tangible reward, in fact Beerbohm would have lost money on fixing the roof and that is exactly how it would have felt, as a loss. Maintenance always feels like a loss and a waste because it takes time, work and money to do it and in the end you have nothing new to show for it. You just go back to where you started. You keep the window frame exactly the way it is. And then once it is done you have to start all over again. 

// And yet as Brand concludes “the issue is core and absolute: no maintenance, no building.” 

// The artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, 

// wrote a manifesto titled 

// Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! And in it Ukeles presents this idea of society dividing up labour into two systems: 

// the development system and the maintenance system. The words Ukeles uses to describe the maintenance system 

// “Keep the dust off, preserve, sustain, protect, defend, prolong, renew” all fit within the tales of Jo and Beerbohm, maintenance is about protecting, prolonging and generally keeping the dust off things.  But it is how Ukeles describes the development system that really puts things into perspective:

//  “pure individual creation; the new; change; progress; advance; excitement”. These are some really fun buzzwords. You are going to want to get some of these into your funding application. 

// And that is exactly what Ukeles is trying to tell us with her manifesto, in society we value development over maintenance. When child comes home from school they want to talk about their fabulous new sculpture made from a milk carton sellotaped to piece of cardboard with stuck on googly eyes.They are not going to tell you about how they tidied up the classroom after they had finished crafting their masterpiece to make it look exactly like it was before they got out the scissors and glue. We do not care about maintenance. Maintenance is less fun, as 

// Ukeles says “Maintenance is a drag; it takes all the f***ing time”. And because we do not care for maintenance work means that we do not reward people for maintenance work. 

// In her art Ukeles discusses the unpaid domestic labour she has to do as a mother but also the labour carried out by the sewage department for example, which is also not going to make you the big bucks.

// To quickly summarise, 

// maintenance is often completely invisible because the outcome makes things seem to ‘stay the same’, 

// it is deeply undervalued in society due our obsession with development, 

// and yet it is utterly essential. This is the case everywhere and 

//heritage sites are no exception. 

If you work on a heritage site two of the hottest topics of conversation is not what the soup of the day is but 

// volunteers and funding and both are severely affected by our societies rather negative view of maintenance work. 

To start with let’s look at volunteers. 

// Just like we rely on maintenance workers to remove the rubbish from our streets, fix our pipes, and clean our nappies, we all rely on 

// National Trust sites to look like National Trust sites, if they don’t we get angry. Let’s take a more specific example – 

// a National Trust garden. A National Trust garden has a look, it is essential that it gets achieved every year for visitor satisfaction, which means it often is achieved every year. 

// So we are kind of going back to the window. Every year the garden looks the same, just like the window, and this stability erases the traces of labour giving the illusion of a magical garden that always looks this great. But this does not just happen.

// It requires a lot of work and who does this work? 

// A couple of head gardeners (a classic maintenance job) 

// and mostly, because it is the National Trust, volunteers, literally people who do not get paid to do the work. 

// Now volunteering is a fantastic opportunity for people to build a community and keep themselves generally occupied, I cannot deny that. But you can also not deny that a volunteer doing gardening is putting a professional gardener out of a job. 

// In the paper Making usable pasts: Collaboration, labour and activism in the archive, an archivist, Carole McCallum, from Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) is quoted saying that she did not want bring volunteers into the archive because it would put a professional out of a job. 

// In another paper on ‘punk archaeology’ the author writes “If people are willing to undertake some forms of archaeological work for free, it is possible this will impact on the value of paid work in the sector.” 

// The use of volunteers on heritage sites creates a vicious cycle, it starts with 

// maintenance labour being undervalued, 

// maintenance jobs then are the first to become unpaid volunteering opportunities, and 

// because the work is now done for free the value of the maintenance work drops again because who would paid someone to do a job when another does it for free. 

// Moving on to funding. It is common knowledge that heritage sites like the majority of organisations in the culture sector rely on money from big funding bodies. 

// Funding bodies therefore have a lot of decision power over what gets money and what does not. If you go to the National Lottery Heritage Fund website and go to the “Projects we’ve funded page” and type ‘develop’ into the search bar you get two pages of results. Now this is not a lot but that is because it just searches titles. 

// Nevertheless if you type in maintenance you get one hit. This is no the most solid evidence and I am looking to do audit of the types of projects that have been funded by large funding bodies. But for now it will have to do, it hints at a difference in value. However, there is one other thing, in this single maintenance hit the title includes the term restoration. It is important to point out that restoration and maintenance are not the same thing. 

// In How Buildings Learn Stuart Brand quotes John Ruskin, “Take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. Watch an old building with an anxious care, guard as best you may, and at any cost, from every influence of dilapidation.” Restoration is only necessary when maintenance fails. 

// Now if you type restoration into the search bar you get many pages of projects. The National Lottery Heritage Fund gives a lot of money to restoration projects. You see restoration and development deliver the same amount of satisfaction, the before and after is impactful and makes everyone go ‘ooh’ and the funding bodies can go home feeling that they made a difference. But if we follow Ruskin then they would not need to do this if they funded maintenance. But as we know it is not sexy and above all it is endless. You cannot fit maintenance into a time limited project and the way the funding systems works we have to work in terms of projects and tangible achievements, so funding maintenance is not an option. 

// So to summarise our undervaluing of maintenance in society has led to 

// an increase in volunteers replacing paid jobs and 

// funding bodies to focus on development and restoration above maintenance projects. And this is where we get to the real painful part, because this is not going to change. We live in an extreme capitalist society which has not changed much since 

// Ukeles pointed out how we do not about care about maintenance work more than fifty years. Look at how we treat our key workers. We clapped for them for a bit 

// but now the vacancies in care and hospitals speak for themselves and you cannot avoid signs asking you not to abuse the staff in most place’s where key workers operate. 

// So society is not going to change but I still have to finish my PhD by 2025 so I will have to work within this framework. 

// My project is specifically looking at how to sustain (re)use of oral history recordings on heritage sites and I am working in collaboration with Seaton Delaval Hall. So basically I am designing a type of archive because currently archives are not oral history recordings’ best friend. 

// What I am doing is 100% part of 

// the development system, and my collaboration partners, the staff at Seaton Delaval Hall are the 

// maintenance workers who have to keep the dust off my creation. Now of course they could simply 

// throw my work into the bin after January 2025 but for my own sense of pride I would like to avoid that. I believe this means I must understand and incorporate ideas of maintenance into my work. 

// First thing I need to do is make something 

// realistic. Now that sounds obvious but currently people are very obsessed with getting technological solutions to problems, 

// which is great but not very realistic. 

// Not a lot of people have the capacity to maintain super complicated digital softwares and considering the National Trust’s reliance on volunteers, who unlikely to have significant computer coding skills, they do not have the labour capacity to handle the maintenance of certain technological solutions. I also need to be realistic when it comes to 

// the time and money people are able to dedicate to maintaining my design. Understanding where my work can fit into the day-to-day running of the Hall is crucial otherwise it is likely to constantly be put on the back burner until there finally is a ‘good time’ to work on it, which given the pressures on the staff is unlikely to be a regular occurrence. 

// The second thing I need to do is make it adaptable.

// Things change all the time and before you know it you are in a global pandemic. 

// Which is why I imagine a certain level of DIY needs to be part of my work, 

// allowing the maintainers of my design to adapt it to their current needs rather than having to bend to my old requirements. 

// Currently I hope that by doing a placement at the Hall I will be able to better understand the needs and desires of those who will be keeping the dust off my work and then be able to make something that fits into the maintenance system at the hall instead of imposing my development system onto them. 

OHD_LST_0119 words

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Acousmatic Sound

Acousmatic sound is sound that is heard without an originating cause being seen. The word acousmatic, from the French acousmatique, is derived from the Greek word akousmatikoi (ἀκουσματικοί), which referred to probationary pupils of the philosopher Pythagoras who were required to sit in absolute silence while they listened to him deliver his lecture from behind a veil or screen to make them better concentrate on his teachings.

Archivism

The act of moving something from the everyday to the space of archive.

Affective Computing

Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognise, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. One of the motivations for the research is the ability to give machines emotional intelligence, including to simulate empathy. The machine should interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt its behaviour to them, giving an appropriate response to those emotions.

Aufhebung

In Hegel, the term Aufhebung has the apparently contradictory implications of both preserving and changing, and eventually advancement (the German verb aufheben means “to cancel”, “to keep” and “to pick up”). 

Authorised Heritage Discourse

The creation of lists that represent the canon of heritage. It is a set of ideas that works to normalise a range of assumptions about the nature and meaning of heritage and to privilege particular practices, especially those of heritage professionals and the state. Conversely, the AHD can also be seen to exclude a whole range of popular ideas and practices relating to heritage.

Brick and Mortar Archives

A rather more elegant term for archives that are stored in buildings. Because it is important to note that digital archives are also very physical.

Content Drift

When the content of a page has been moved around on the internet causing certain links to no longer be attached to that specific page.

Counter-reading

Counter reading is when you identify the gaps in an archive, analyse why they are exist and combined this with further contextual history in order to fulfil your research.

Data Degradation

Data degradation is the gradual corruption of computer data due to an accumulation of non-critical failures in a data storage device. The phenomenon is also known as data decay, data rot or bit rot.

Disciplinary Upbringing

The separate lenses through which individuals from different fields of work view and approach things like: problem solving, language, and general practice.

Drive By Collaboration

Collaborating but only a trivial amount of time and often to fulfil a funding requirement.

Ego Documents

The word ‘egodocument’ refers to autobiographical writing, such as memoirs, diaries, letters and travel accounts. The term was coined around 1955 by the historian Jacques Presser, who defined egodocuments as writings in which the ‘I’, the writer, is continuously present in the text as the writing and describing subject.

GAFA

Acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. The tech giants.

Historical Imagination

A tool use by historians to put themselves into the shoes of the historical figure they are investigating or imagining themselves in the streets of a certain historical setting. It can be helpful to bring together separate ideas and bring the history back to life as such.

GLAM

GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum.

Link Rot

When the webpage attached to a link can no longer be found when you click on it and instead offers you the message “Page not found”

Liquid Architecture

Liquid architecture is an architecture that breathes, pulses, leaps as one form and lands as another. Liquid architecture is an architecture whose form is contingent on the interest, of the beholder; it is an architecture that opens to welcome me and closes to defend me; it is an architecture without doors and hallways, where the next room is always where I need it to be and what I need it to be.

Marcos Novak in “Liquid architecture in Cyberpace”

Media

Originally coming from the word mediator.

Media Archaeology

Media archaeology or media archeology is a field that attempts to understand new and emerging media through close examination of the past, and especially through critical scrutiny of dominant progressivist narratives of popular commercial media such as film and television. Media archaeologists often evince strong interest in so-called dead media, noting that new media often revive and recirculate material and techniques of communication that had been lost, neglected, or obscured. Some media archaeologists are also concerned with the relationship between media fantasies and technological development, especially the ways in which ideas about imaginary or speculative media affect the media that actually emerge.

Media Literacy

Media literacy encompasses the practices that allow people to access, critically evaluate, and create or manipulate media. Media literacy is not restricted to one medium. Media literacy education is intended to promote awareness of media influence and create an active stance towards both consuming and creating media. Media literacy education is part of the curriculum in the United States and some European Union countries, and an interdisciplinary global community of media scholars and educators engages in knowledge sharing through scholarly and professional journals and national membership associations.

Multivalence

Multi-valents, many values, the holding of different values at the same time without implying confusion, contradiction, or even paradox. (Term coined by Michael Frisch.

Open Access

Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers.

Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Participatory Action Research (PAR) has been defined as a collaborative process of research, education and action explicitly oriented towards social transformation. Participatory Action Researchers recognise the existence of a plurality of knowledges in a variety of institutions and locations. In particular, they assume that ‘those who have been most systematically excluded, oppressed or denied carry specifically revealing wisdom about the history, structure, consequences and the fracture points in unjust social arrangements’. PAR therefore represents a counter hegemonic approach to knowledge production.

Post Private

The age of high surveillance which we live in now.

Reference Rot

When links in footnotes on longer are attached to the reference. This is often due to link rot or content drift.

Software Rot

Software rot, also known as bit rot, code rot, software erosion, software decay, or software entropy is either a slow deterioration of software quality over time or its diminishing responsiveness that will eventually lead to software becoming faulty, unusable, or in need of upgrade. This is not a physical phenomenon: the software does not actually decay, but rather suffers from a lack of being responsive and updated with respect to the changing environment in which it resides.

Taxonomy

The science, laws, or principles of classification.

Vox Pox

Coming from the latin vox populi, it refers to a short interview with a member of the public.

Wikidata

Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, can use under the CC0 public domain license. Wikidata is powered by the software Wikibase.

OHD_PRS_0118 🏛⏳🏺📜: Connecting with history through our screen

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This was not a very good paper. I was very busy and I did not put my whole heart in it, which is always a shame. But a learning moment to remember to plan these things better

Slides

Google Gemini Summary of OHD_PRS_0118 - Connecting with history through our screen
[generated 06 / 01 / 2025]

Challenges with Existing Digital Archives: You effectively critique current digital archives, highlighting their limitations in capturing the serendipity and emotional connection often associated with physical archives. Issues such as clunky interfaces, limited search functionality, and the loss of contextual information are identified.

The "Archive-Robot" Metaphor: This is a novel and insightful perspective. By framing digital archives as "archive-robots" still under development, you emphasize the need for ongoing refinement and improvement. It shifts the focus from simply replicating physical archives to exploring new possibilities for digital interaction and engagement.

The Importance of Human Connection: You emphasize the importance of human interaction and the emotional connection to physical archives. You highlight the limitations of purely digital experiences and the need to consider the social and cultural contexts of archival research.

Ethical Considerations: You raise important ethical concerns regarding data privacy, digital inequality, and the environmental impact of digital technologies.

A Call for Innovation: You advocate for a more human-centered approach to digital archives, emphasizing the need for creativity, collaboration, and a willingness to experiment with new technologies and methodologies.

Key takeaways for your PhD research:

Focus on User Experience: Design digital tools that are intuitive, user-friendly, and enhance rather than hinder the research experience.
Embrace Collaboration: Foster close collaboration between oral historians, archivists, technologists, and community members throughout the design and development process.

Prioritize Sustainability: Consider the long-term sustainability of digital technologies, including maintenance, data preservation, and environmental impact.

Explore Innovative Approaches: Experiment with new technologies and methodologies, such as AI and machine learning, while also recognizing the limitations of technology and the importance of human interaction.

Overall, this presentation demonstrates a strong understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented by the intersection of oral history, technology, and heritage management. Your insightful observations and critical thinking will undoubtedly be valuable assets as you embark on this exciting research journey.

Script

Since the start of my PhD in January there are two things I have observed when people talk about archives during COVID.

  1. People complain about the digital archives 
  2. People express how much they missing brick and mortar archives

I, too, hold these opinions. I have recently started digging through the National Trust’s oral history archive which is housed at the British Library and it has not been the most relaxing affair. Every time I clicked on an entry and then wanted to go back to my search results I would have to refresh my page and if I accidentally clicked on any of the names that were hyperlinked in the entry pages I would lose my place in the archive and have to go back to the start. I also have very little experience of actually working in an oral history archive so really need to visit a brick and mortar archive that houses oral history. The only information I do have on listening to oral history in a brick and mortar archive comes from my friend who told me in horror how they had given a CD player and a broken set of headphones. 

What I am going to do for this presentation is dissect these two observations and explore how I can reframe these in order to use them in my work for my PhD.

Point 1! 

Let us start with the digital archives that so many of us have had to rely on over the last year. Digital archives exist because they are following the bigger trend of moving our lives online. But this move from brick and mortar to digital is about a literal as it can get. When I was going through the National Trust’s oral history archive it felt as if the British Library took the index cards that accompanied the recordings and just transcribe them into a webpage. They moved the collection online without thinking about how this new realm could enhance the experience of archive. Other than the fact that this makes going through the archive a bit frustrating and boring you also lose that serendipity that everyone always talks about when they are in brick and mortar archives: the scribble in the margins, the note lost in the pages of a book. These two things: the loss of serendipity and the direct translation is why I believe people are complaining.

So how do we solve this? To start with I suggest a reframing of what we think a digital archive is. As I previously mentioned a digital archive is not the digital equivalent of a brick and mortar archive because we lose that serendipity that we love so much. So what if we view the digital archive as a tool to access the information in the brick and mortar archive. Our computers, browsers and webpages then become the tools that grant us access to the archive, which is a role normally held by archivists. They are the people who usually accompany us in our journey through the brick and mortar archive. But our computers, browsers and webpages are not the same as a fully trained archivist. An archivist is a human who is capable of complex and creative thought. They can solve problems and navigate around barriers, while a computer is only as creative as its database and code allows it to be. So we could view digital archives as a digital alternative to archivists but I believe this would still cause frustration, because within this framing we are still comparing the new digital archives to the old brick and mortar archives and in this fight the brick and mortar archives have the creative upper hand (for now.)

So I would like to propose another way of framing our digital archives. A couple of weeks ago I attended a seminar on AI. During the seminar, Professor Irina Shklovski from the University of Copenhagen presented a paper called AI as Relational Infrastructure. She discussed how the way we view AI is all wrong. We view AI as a tool we can used but Shklovski suggested that we should view it as a relationship, an exchange of skills and knowledge. So I translated this principle onto my work in the National Trust’s oral history archive. This translation made me view my computer, the browser and this British Library portal as an archive-robot that was trying to help me navigate the messiness of the brick and mortar archive on the other side of my screen. However this archive-robot is very new to the archive; we need to remember that digital archives are the new kids on the block and these archive-robots do not know the ways of the archive yet. The way that I currently picture this relationship is as follows. Here we have our archive-robot who has just started their new job at the archive, they do not really know what they are doing, they might have even lied a bit on the CV. Along come a lot of random people who start handing all their documents, notes, and other bits and bobs over to the archive-robot, who and I cannot stress this enough has no idea what they are doing, and expects them to just sort everything out. This is a rather tall order as we already know that archive-robots cannot think as creatively as a human-archivist – yet. What we need to do now as a community that uses these archives is train these new kids in archiving because in the end they will help us in our research. 

I know this sounds like I am advocating robot rights. Maybe I am a bit but what I really trying to say is that instead of viewing digital archives as the digital equivalent of brick and mortar archives, or viewing them as tools to access those archives, you can view them as an archive-robot who is trying to adapt to this new world as much as you are. It might sound like a silly idea but I can tell you from experience it eases the frustration a bit. And most importantly if we view our digital archives like this we put ourselves into a mindset that allows us to seek progress and development in our digital archives and not just settle for this rather crude translation of brick and archives. Digital archives are still in development and I think that if we see them more like archive-robots in training then maybe we can help them help us. 

Point 2!

People miss brick and mortar archives. Other than the fact that we don’t really like digital archives right now, I think there is something deeply emotional about people’s desire to reenter brick and mortar archives. Even though we might have access to certain documents online, people still want to be near the physical document. Just like how people travel to see the Mona Lisa despite the fact that everyone knows what the Mona Lisa looks like. This feeling, this desire, this need to be in the physical space I also see in my mother, who because of the pandemic has not been able to travel to her motherland the Netherlands for nearly a year now. Just like the archive-robots allow us to connect to the brick and mortar archives, my mother has been able to connect to her homeland via her devices be that FaceTime with her sister, watching dutch tv, reading dutch newspapers or listening to dutch radio. But we know it is not the same as physically being there. She wants to connect to the land. She wants to be in that physical environment. And I think this feeling is very similar to people missing brick and mortar archives as if the archive is their motherland.

I think it is necessary to understand the importance of this connection when it comes to research. Connecting with your subject of your research in an emotional way can help one be more responsible in how we handle our archival material. This is especially important in cases where the archival material is from someone who is still alive or has close living relatives, which is something that is very common with oral history. When we use our digital devices to access archival material or in fact do anything that involves interacting with humans dead or alive online we have something I am going to call “digital distance”. 

Through our screens we reduce humans to a handful of pixels, a username and 240 character statements. This is digital distance and the reason why some people do or say bad things because that person to them is not fully human because the way they are presented on our screens is not fully human – you cannot look them in the eye. Now obviously you cannot look the creators of archival material in the eye because most likely they are dead. But their humanity is present in the archives in their bad handwriting, spelling mistakes and doodles. Physically being with the documents, imagining what they smelt, felt and saw when they were creating this document makes us connect on an emotional level. It reminds you that these are not just bits of isolated evidence but actually are part of a wider portrait of someone’s life. You become invested in this ghost type thing and the only way to truly feel their presence is by being in the brick and mortar archive. 

This feeling of closeness that people want to have with the Mona Lisa and feeling of belonging that people have with their motherland they can be found in people desire to go back into brick and mortar archives. It is a connection that is strange and maybe nothing completely logical but very human. I think by reframing this observation as the archive as motherland highlights the importance of the physical in archiving. It is a physical activity and the fact that it is physical plays an important role in responsible researching.  

How does this help me?

For my PhD I have been challenge with building an oral history archive-esque thing at the National Trust property Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland. 

So, how can this reframing of observations into the archive-robot and the archive-motherland help me build an archive?

Reframe 1

As I said previously by reframing the frustrations of the digital archive into the naive archive-robot we put ourselves into a position where we want actively want change. We are thinking about what the archive-robot might look like when they grow up. What this reframing allows me to do is start thinking in terms of design-driven innovation. Design-driven innovation is a term used by the design scholar Roberto Verganti in a book by the same name. The idea behind design-driven innovation is seeking to change the meaning of an object or system. For example, corkscrews are there to open my wine but this corkscrew by Alessi “dances” for you and plays on you inner child. Similarly portable music players allowed you to listen to music on the move, but the iPod allowed you to cheaply buy songs from iTunes and then curate them into your own personal soundtrack. 

Here we have two axis: change in technology and a change in meaning both have a scale from incremental to radical change. In the corner we have market pull/user-centered design. Here we have the bubble design-driven innovation, where see radical change in meaning and the bubble technological push where there is radical change in technology. In this yellow part where there is a radical change in meaning but not in technology we find designs like Alessi’s corkscrew. In this blue section we find technologies like the first mp3 player, which was a significant technological upgrade from portable cassette and cd players. Now in this green part we find the iPod. This green part is what Verganti refers to as a technological epiphany. 

Currently our digital archives and archive-robots live here in the blue section where there is an upgrade in technology but not in meaning. As I said using the British Library does feel like they uploaded the index cards. By the way, this is not a just people being silly, human kind always does this when there is a change in technology. The first cars looked like carriages and our save button looks like a floppy disc. We don’t like radical change so we keep the meaning and symbols. But for my PhD I want to do what Apple did in 2001 and also achieve a technological epiphany. I want to upgrade the archive-robot because I think this is the perfect opportunity to do so when everyone is using digital-archives so much and complaining about them. 

Reframe 2

So how will I use this idea of the archive-motherland in my work. As I briefly mention before oral history often deals with people who are still alive so looking after their archival material responsibly is imperative. That is why I do not think it is too much to ask that if you want to take information from the community you should probably think about becoming part of that community. And the only way to do that is to physically go there and look the people in the face. This is not a new idea there are many archives that only allow you to access the oral history recordings if you are in the building where they are stored. This is the case with the National Trust’s oral history archive which you can only listen to if you are in the British Library. Now I think you might be able to predict what my problem with this is. The British Library is in London and quite some miles away from Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland. So if I want to keep this principle of connecting to history through physical space I might have to very politely ask the British Library if they could maybe bend the rules for me. 

Conclusion!

I think that what I am trying to get at here is that through these observations and reframing I think I can say that connecting with history is a deeply human process. And the way we do it and the way it is changing because of technology and the pandemic is nothing new to human kind. I think that while we do pursue these new technologies we also need to remember that emotional connection we have within the brick and mortar archives. I do not know for sure what archives will look like in a years time but a lot of it with have started now during the pandemic.

I really want to end on a quick note that I think it is really important to remember that the internet and the servers that the internet is store on use up a truly insane amount of energy and are very bad for the environment and the majority is own by amazon, which is actually a terrifying idea when you think about it. 

OHD_BLG_0039 It’s not my problem

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There is a problem within the National Trust’s storage system (SharePoint) that is sadly a consequence of democratisation. SharePoint is a complete mess and no one really knows what is going on or who to ask about what is going on. And although this has a lot to do with the design of SharePoint and the lack of transparency surrounding the structure of folders and such, there is another reason there is so much chaos in the folders and that is control. You see before this chaos took hold it was the collection staff who would have been in charge of the archival and collection material, while others might handle files concerning business. Information would have been kept on people’s shelves in their offices, and so to access this information you would have to go through a human. This might in some cases be really annoying because the person who could grant access wasn’t feeling up for it. But then the internet came along with the main intention to make information free and accessible – a more democratic system. Like everyone else the National Trust also decided to remove its strict system of gatekeepers and adopt the attitude of the internet. And this is where an unforeseen consequence arises because while before one person was responsible for a file, now everyone is responsible for all the files, there are no parameters. And because everyone is in charge of looking after everything it is really easy for the individual to simply hope that the next person will sort out that file. Also because looking after files is maintenance and people do not like doing maintenance. Now do not get me wrong I agree that we should have better access to archives and no has the right to deny someone access, but in a world where everyone is responsible, no one is responsible and the National Trust’s SharePoint proves this.

OHD_BLG_0041 The winds of change are blowing…

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I feel there is a change in the wind… Specifically people are starting to think more long term about their projects, they are becoming more archive focused. This is not too surprising there is a reason my PhD is happening now and not earlier. Timing is everything when it comes to research and people from different fields have invested in this PhD which they would not have done if it was a ridiculously radical idea. But crucially funding bodies also seem to be changing their tune slightly. I was pointed in the direction of the National Heritage Fund’s new programme, Dynamic Collections. According to their new campaign:

Our new campaign supports collecting organisations across the UK to become more inclusive and resilient, with a focus on engagement, re-interpretation and collections management.

THE NATIONAL HERITAGE FUND

Sounds pretty promising if you ask me…

OHD_BLG_0042 What do you mean not digital?

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Whenever I mention my ideas for analogue archiving solutions to anyone the reaction I get is a blank stare shifty follow by a change in subject. When I was venting about this recurring experience to my mother, she did not seem surprised; “what do you except people see the digital as the future?” She is correct this is what people believe but the ‘future’ is a rather nebulous concept and it is important to manage expectations – how far is the ‘future’? If you take what is written in The shock of the old: technology and global history since 1900 then you will quickly understand how far off we are from the future and how slow technology actually moves. The writer approaches the history of technology not through the lens of innovation but from use – a use-based history of technology. This quickly reveals the pace at which humanity really adopts technology through examples like horses being more important in Nazi Germany’s advances than the V2 and the fact that we have never used as much coal as now. We are slow at technology, which is fine but we need to be aware of it. The digital divide is a real thing and it needs to be considered. Note that the digital divide is not across generational lines, yes older people cannot use TikTok, but I have seen children struggle to use a keyboard and a mouse because they are so used to touch screens. The digital divide also means that there is an exclusive group of people who do know how to use this tech and they are in high demand, to the extend that there is little incentive for workers to lend their services to the GLAM sector. Why would you work for less money in a library when you can earn a hundred times more somewhere else. Heritage sites and the wider GLAM sector can in many instance not afford to develop their own technologies mostly because they are unable to maintain them. But they also sometimes struggle to update their bought in systems because moving all their data on their collection round is too much work and effort. And in some cases the software producers are aware of this and shut down the feedback loop because they know their customers can’t leave them. To summaries saying “digital is the future” is an unproductive lie that we tell ourselves to make us feel better and trendy.

Here comes my suggestion otherwise we would be left hanging in a rather sad place. The National Trust is undoubtedly a large organisation and they already run several digital platforms which they have their own maintenance team for. What I suggest is that if people want to create cool snazzy digital interfaces they have to do this at Trust, because the Trust already have the infrastructure in place (to certain extent) to cope with the difficulties of running a digital system. E.G. https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio On individual site level however digital platforms cannot be made or maintain and the only option in my eyes is to either to keep it analogue (better for the environment) or DIY digital. By DIY digital I mean word docs and spreadsheets and softwares that are a little more accessible to a wider group of people. These option are more accessible and more maintainable but they are less sexy. When it comes to working with digital you have to know your limits and the people around you and the people who will come after you. It is not exciting but it might just solve your problem.

OHD_BLG_0043 Philosophy is easier than reality

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On Monday 11th April 2022 I attended and ran a workshop at the Seaton Delaval Hall Community Research Day. It was an exceptionally interesting affair and mostly certain did not go the way I imagined. If I had to sum it up I would describe it as engaging but impractical. To say that it got deep real quick would be an understatement but the to which it went was fascinating. It was also great to just bounce ideas off people. However it felt like whenever I attempt to move the conversation to getting to more practical solutions people rather stayed in philosophical and imaginary realm or they would just explain why it would not be possible to change that.

Maybe I am too much of a designer, wanting to think of solutions instead of sticking to the status quo. Or maybe this is exactly what I should be doing, building a bridge between the imaginary realm and the real world. Maybe this is the point that Verganti talks about when he discusses ‘Interpreters’. The people in that room on Monday were my interpreters, the people I can draw on for inspiration and ideas…

If this is the case it is now my job to turn the “multi-verse” of history that we kept talking about into reality. No pressure….