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OHD_PRS_0265 Reusing oral history in GLAM: a wicked problem

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My PhD or CDA, collaborative doctoral award is about reusing oral history recordings within GLAM, galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. I am using the National Trust property Seaton Delaval Hall, as a case study.  Now for context my background is in Art and Design. I did Fine Art at undergrad and then moved into design, specifically innovation and system design. And so when it comes to the infamous issue of reusing oral histories I approach it from the perspective of a designer. This has led me to frame the issue as a “wicked problem”. The term “Wicked problem” comes from a paper titled, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, written by a Professor of the Science of Design, Horst Rittel and a Professor of City Planning Melvin Webber in 1973. And the term has been adopted by innovators and designers because this paper is about problem solving and the act of design is basically problem solving. In the paper Rittel and Webber specifically discuss two types of problem solving: “tame and benign” problems and “wicked problems”. Tame, benign or scientific problems are simple. They are easy to define and have one simple solution. It is a very linear process: define problem, solve problem. A wicked problem is exactly the opposite. They are extremely difficult to define and coming up with one simple solution is close to impossible. And the process of solving a wicked problem is not linear at all. Defining the problem and creating solutions often happen at the same time in a kind of back forth manner. You make an initial definition of your problem and create a solution to that problem and then the testing of a solution reveals another part of the problem. So you go back to your problem definition and tweak it, and then think of another solution and it repeats. In fact, as Rittel and Webber write this process could go on forever since a wicked problem will forever keep evolving as the world changes. You can therefore never truly solve a wicked problem but only pick various interim solutions which are not perfect but will cause the least damage. And to keep creating these interim solutions you need collaboration because a single person could not possibly understand all the evolutions in the wicked problem, all the different angles, all the different stakeholders.

Therefore my project is a Collaborative Doctoral Award for a really good reason. I have benefitted greatly from being in collaboration with the National Trust because I got access to a huge variety of people who I could work with in order to build a better understanding of the problem definition and any potential solutions. And over the nearly three years I have been working on this project I have been able to expand the definition of the oral history reuse in GLAM problem. It is extremely complicated, and the specifics of my case study will not be the same as all GLAM institutions. As trait seven of wicked problem goes “every wicked problem is essentially unique”. But I have found five recurring areas of wickedness, which most GLAM institutions will have to deal with when tackling the reuse of oral history recordings: technology, labour (specially maintenance labour), money, ethics and law, and value. In order for an organisation to start understanding the wicked problem of oral history reuse and start creating solution, there needs to be a collaboration between the people who work within these five areas. Within each unique institution there will definitely be other areas and other people that need to be brought to the table but it is these five areas and the people who work in them which make up the foundation of solving the wicked problem of oral history reuse.

I am going to start with technology because this is the area which often hogs all the attention, which is not surprising, we like the technological fix, it’s sci-fi, it’s the future, it’s a bit magic. But its magic is an illusion, as Willem Schneider acknowledges in his reflection on the oral history reuse technology Project Jukebox[1]. Technology on its own will not solve the wicked problem of oral history reuse. Obsolescence has be built into technology in a near aggressive way. So while you can recruit a software engineer at the start your project to develop your technology, you are going to need someone who is able to maintain the technology when obsolescence kicks in. The area of technology is therefore completely intertwined with the area of labour, specifically maintenance labour. Maintaining a technology is not easy and the more complex a technology, the harder it is the maintain, and the more specialised person you need to hire to maintain it.

So when we think about the technology we are going to use to tackle our wicked problem, we need to always be thinking about the labour needed to maintain it. We need to collaborate with those who will maintain it and not be seduced by magic of complex technology. Because while we now have complex AI technology like ChatGPT, I can tell you from experience, and I am sure many of you can relate, in the National Trust you are using a landline to organise interview dates and posting transcripts and consent forms by snail mail. As the historian David Edgerton writes in his book The Shock of the old we should not measure technology through innovations but rather use. In which case Excel and Word are still king of the technologies.

So the technology used to help create a solution to the wicked problem of oral history reuse has to be proportional to the skills of the person maintaining it, which is why you collaborate with them. But that person and their skills will need to be paid for and so you need to talk to the money people. Economic system you are working in will directly influence your technology, because the more complex the technology, the more expertise you need, the more likely it is things are going to be a little more on the expensive side. People with advanced technological skills are not cheep. They make a lot more money shooting down bugs all day in a monster tech organisation then being the IT person in the GLAM sector. And this is not just money for a set amount of time, this is labour needed to maintain an archival object – this goes on forever. So getting feedback from the money people on any solutions you are developing your solve your wicked problem, your particular case of “how do we make oral histories reusable within my institution?”, is invaluable because the truth is money does make the world go round. So recruiting them into your little collaboration crew is essential.

Now what I have talked about so far is basically the mechanics of oral history reuse. How you use an appropriate technology to get your oral history recording from A to B from a WAV file to useable, searchable interface and keep it there. But you cannot just simply just go from A to B with oral histories. I have done three different placements for my PhD and in during all of them I was trying to make archival material reusable. I spent those six months not thinking about technology but working on either copyright, data protection, or sensitivity checks. When you are working with oral histories you are dealing with people’s lives, permissions and restrictions have to be in place in order to make it available. Which is why alongside your tech developer, your maintainer, money people, you have to have your copyright team, your data protection team, and maybe some kind of ethical review team. And again, just like obsolescence in technology collaboration is crucial because ethics changes all the time. Copyright in the form we know it now was heavily influence by the internet, which is relatively young. GDPR was only implemented in 2018. And what language and images are deemed socially acceptable is always changing. The feedback you get from the ethics people to keep your ethics up to date is so important, because most institutions in the GLAM sector cannot really afford a lawsuit or scandal, so you need to get this right.

It is getting busy our collaboration crew but have one area of wickedness left, value, and this is where things start to get really sticky, because all I have talked about so far is about making reusable oral histories not about actually reusing them. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. You can make your oral histories as reusable as you like but if people do not want to reuse oral histories they are not going to reuse, even if its easy to do. They have to see the value in reusing.

And this is where I mention trait 8 of wicked problems “Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem”. The difficulty of reusing oral histories is a symptom of the problem with how we value historical material. And how we value historical material is a wicked problem in itself because you can value things in so many different ways. The classic way is it monetary value. Within this frame oral histories are not going to fair to well against other historical items like chairs, paintings, original Beatles lyrics. In total I have seen the National Trust used eight different ways to value material:

Communal – The item represents a particular community.

Aesthetic importance – The item is deemed ‘aesthetically’ important or is from a famous artist.

Illustrative / historic – The item is illustrative of some historic moment.

Evidential – The item works as evidence to see how something was.

Supports Learning – The item is helpful in supporting learning found in the national curriculum.

Popular appeal – The item has mainstream appeal.

Cultural heritage significance – The item is significant to a specific culture.

Contextual Significance – The item gives important contextual information to a site, or a historical event

Materials also have international, national, regional or local value.

You can also flip the idea of value, how much is it going to cost to keep this item? This can again be measured several ways for example money and space, but also carbon. How much energy will it take to keep this item? Yep the reusing of oral history is an environmental issue.

Value is complicated and in order to get people to reuse oral histories we need to understand all the value oral histories can offer. We need to talk to curators, artists, educators, community workers, academics, all the potential different reusers and ask them what they find valuable. Why would they reuse oral history? And then we need to think about how we communicate this value. Do we go top down and work with policy makers to develop policy which makes it a requirement to reuse oral histories? Or do we work bottom up and try and nurture a culture of oral history reuse by teaching it more at a university level and creating projects based around reuse? Although whether a project based solely around reuse will get funding is another question, which brings us back to the money people and proves the wicked entanglement of it all.

This is not a banal, tame problem. It is a wicked problem – a mess. These five areas, well four overlapping` areas and a continent of complexity, are deeply intertwined and this is before we even start bringing in the unique elements of each individual institutions case of oral history reuse. And the only way to start detangling in some way without failing or being destructive is by collaborating and create a solution that will bring us a step closer to reusing oral history.

[1] “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)

OHD_WRT_0179 Summary of thinking Spring 2021

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Summary of thinking 

In this rather tumultuous world I think that this CDA currently addresses three points of change: the digital invasion, the history review and collaboration fever. When I refer to the digital invasion I am specifically talking about the digital’s influence in the GLAM sector, which pre-pandemic was already making its mark through pressure to digitise collections but now has had a rather large boost due to many of the brick-and-mortar buildings being closed for long periods of time causing institutions to move everything online including exhibitions. The second point of change encompasses several discussions people are having about how we represent our history today. Contemporary issues, like the Black Lives Matter movement, the #metoo movement and climate change have caused people to demand a review on how we represent the past, wishing for it to be more inclusive and better reflect the stories of minorities. The final point of change, collaboration fever, addresses the increasing interest in interdisciplinary projects both in- and outside academia. 

Within each of these points of change there are conflicts, clashes and collisions that are happening. These often take place around the symbols and languages we used to communicate in each sphere. For example in the digital invasion we can find a clash between the symbols and languages used by the digital realm and the archival realm. Where the digital is fast and shiny, the archive is slow and dusty. When searching the digital the user relies on pre-inputted keywords while archival searching relies on the creative knowledge of the archivists. What each sphere returns from a search is also in opposition; the order digital list versus the somewhat messy archive box of stuff. Here I believe the challenge is to soften and slow down the invasion of the digital as I am pessimistic that it will be able cure all the problems that brick-and-mortar archives presently experience. 

The conflict found in the history review is clearly based around the symbols and language we use to discuss our history and what affect it has on modern society. Where one sees a symbol of the Great British Empire another sees a symbol of the slave trade. Where one generation sees coal as a symbol of a way of life that was destroyed, another views it as a symbol of pollution and an unsustainable industry. The problem here is that currently people approach this discussion in two very extreme ways; either they ignore it completely or they turn it into a war of identity. The challenge inside this point of change is to create a space for a more nuanced discussion.  

The clashes that happen within the last point of change I have experience first hand many times. Every field of research has its own accompany culture, language and habits. When people collaborate across disciplines they bring this baggage with them. This can lead to clashes and confusion as symbols can mean completely different things in different fields. However, this clash of cultures is not the only problem within this point that I am concerned about. My biggest qualm with this point, and why I refer to it as collaboration ‘fever’, is that there is a growing romanticism around the language used in the area of collaborative projects. The gimmicky jargon, the token gestures and the ritualistic methods can, in my opinion flatten, and mute the collaborative process. This is an issue that is being picked up on by different people in the field of design. They are critical of how people are packaging their ‘methods’ into toolkits and selling them on to non-designers, which reduces the process into a tick-boxing exercise instead of a critical, thoughtful and difficult collaborative process. 

So how do we tackle the challenges within each of these points of change? My current proposal is replacing these clashes of cultures and frustrating discussions with dialogue. In his book On Dialogue David Bohm describes discussion as a game on ping-pong where the focus is on defending ones truths against another’s. In contrast dialogue is focussed on creating a collective culture and an overall shared meaning. I imagine that creating this collective culture is far more sustainable for our points of change than the current discussions that are happening.

In case of our first point of change dialogue can be used to slow down the invasion of the digital. Where currently the digital is imposing its culture onto the archive, through search bars and keywords, dialogue offers the opportunity for the culture of the archive to inform the digital. Having this exchange of ideas instead of one field dictating to another opens the door to creating new creative technologies, rather than having this constant battle between cultures. We instead create a new set of cyborg symbols and languages, that in addition offers the opportunity to make both areas more inclusive. Where currently the digital sphere is for nerdy techies and the archive is for nerdy academics we can create a new space for all nerds. 

Transforming heritage sites into places of dialogue is already happening with ventures like the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience founded by Liz Ševčenko. In her paper on the subject of the Sites of Conscience, Ševčenko emphasise the need to implement dialogue into the management of heritage sites as a way to not suppress conflict but instead view it as something that should be “embraced as an ongoing opportunity.” This should be one of the targets in order to make it sustainable beyond the timescale of the project. 

The role that dialogue can play within collaboration fever is creating a space where we are aware of each person’s cultural baggage, but also make a space where we constantly question the process of collaboration. Hopefully we will then we able to harvest a more holistic picture of the collaborative process rather patting ourselves on the back for completing certain tasks and achieving specific outcomes. 

So how do we create a sustainable dialogue that address all three points of change? Currently my suggestion is make things, together, all the time. In my opinion we should make things because it makes the dialogue more tangible and easier for those who were not there to understand the thought process. It also causes people to buy into the process more, make them feel like they are part of something and are being heard. This making needs to be constant, because every time we make something it is essential that we reflect on it in order to fully understand the process and avoid this project becoming an exercise in ticking boxes.

Now there comes a point where we need to capture this ongoing process. At the end of the three years we can show the results of our making in a conclusive way through an exhibition or oral history project or an archive. However, it is of utmost importance, as I have previously touched upon, that we analyse this constant collaborative making in a way that allows it to live beyond the three years of this project. Otherwise all the preaching about sustainable dialogue is completely undermined.  

To summaries this project deals with three points of change: the invasion of the digital into the GLAM sector, the conversation surrounding changing attitudes to our past and the increasing interest in collaborative work. Each of these points of change have areas of conflict based around symbols and language that in my opinion can be combated by creating a sustainable dialogue through constant collaborative making. Hopefully this process will result into something that lives beyond the time limit of this project and can be adopted by other parties who wish to embark on a similar venture in the future.