ce. 001 Action research ‘consists largely of case studies.’1 Admittedly, what I conducted was not a formal case study, but this section presents my work with my collaborative partner Seaton Delaval Hall and by extension the National Trust. This work with the Hall and the Trust ran throughout my research project, and so they produced the most comprehensive outputs in relation to the issue of maintaining access to oral histories.
ce. 002 I address the National Trust and Seaton Delaval Hall separately to demonstrate the wicked problem on different scales. The National Trust offered a more top-down view of the situation, requiring me to consider how to manage the issue of maintaining access to oral history across a wide variety of similar, but still different scenarios. The Hall offered a view from ground-level, and gave me the opportunity to observe the issue of maintaining access to oral history up close. When I combined and contrasted these two bodies of experience and knowledge, it revealed a tension between formalised standards set by the Trust and the need for a more flexible approach on site level for local staff to adapt and adopt as they see fit.
ce. 003 I would like to emphasise (again) the particulars of the situation will not apply to every version of the wicked problem of maintaining access to oral history, however it does demonstrate a method of working with oral history which can be utilised by others.
The National Trust
ce. 004 This Trust focussed section considers the (lack of) collection policy, the current advice given to those who wish to run an oral history project, and the existing collection of National Trust oral history recordings, which is housed at the British Library.
Seaton Delaval Hall
ce. 005 This section looks at my collaboration with the staff and volunteers at Seaton Delaval Hall. The Hall is relatively new to the National Trust family and therefore is a blank slate for designing, especially because there were no oral history recordings related to the site until my project.2 I have also included my work on the Hall’s Research Room as this provided great insight into the systems and processes of the Hall.