{"id":19,"date":"2025-01-10T15:29:03","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/hjameslouwerse2\/?page_id=19"},"modified":"2025-06-09T11:48:54","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T10:48:54","slug":"the-wicked-problems","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/hjameslouwerse2\/the-wicked-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wicked Problem(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

wp. 001<\/mark><\/em> The eighth property of wicked problems is that: \u2018every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.\u20191<\/a><\/sup> I believe the limited reuse of oral history is, at least in part, a symptom of the insufficient maintenance of access to oral histories. My research into previous attempts to improve the reuse of oral history through digital technology revealed that historically little attention has been given to maintaining oral history archives and repositories.2<\/a><\/sup> However, like the limited reuse of oral histories being a symptom of insufficient maintenance, the scarce maintenance of access to oral histories is also the symptom of other wicked problems. My research focussed primarily on mapping and understanding the various dimensions of the wicked problem of maintaining access to oral histories. Throughout my research I produced several maps and graphics exploring these interlinking wicked problems, editing and adding to them as I learnt more about the reality of maintaining oral history archives and repositories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The wicked problem map was too big to upload on to this blog, but it can be viewed by clicking on this button.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The first iteration of the wicked problem – OHD_MMP_0156<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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My PhD in a graphic – OHD_GRP_0176<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Later iteration, The maintenance of oral history – OHD_GRP_0178<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 002<\/mark><\/em> The struggle with mapping these wicked problems is how each formulation of the wicked problem of maintaining access to oral history is \u2018essentially unique.\u20193<\/a><\/sup> I had to avoid being too specific with these maps as some factors do not universally apply to all organisations with oral history archives or repositories. This is not uncommon in a design process, as ‘design is fundamentally concerned with the particular.’4<\/a><\/sup> The majority of the outputs I created were specifically tailored to the institutions I was working in as there were several differences. For example, the British Library (established in the 18th century) and the National Trust (founded in the 19th century) have deep-rooted traditions that make adapting to the digital era challenging. In contrast, Archives at NCBS, founded in 2019, emerged in the digital age and is less constrained by analogue custom and practice. The British Library and Archives at NCBS are both archives with oral history collections, while the National Trust is a heritage charity which collects oral histories, but deposits them with the British Library. As a heritage organisation the staff at Seaton Delaval Hall need to manage a wider infrastructure including a cafe, toilets, a garden, a shop, a car park, and a wider voluntary workforce. I recognise all three have space which are open to the public, but unlike at the Hall, the General Manager and the Collections staff at the British Library and Archives at NCBS are not also pointing visitors to the correct parking spots! The Library and the Archives have particular staff to carry out these jobs. In addition, each organisation has different funding streams and staffing structures, all of which will, as I discuss later, contribute to how the access to oral history can be maintained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wp. 003<\/mark><\/em> Throughout my design process I was adding and taking away from the wicked problem, fluctuating between the specific and the general. Eventually the wicked problem consisted of four general areas of wickedness, which occurred throughout my placements and oral history project: technology, ethics, labour, and money. They are of course not the only areas that contribute to the wicked problem of maintaining access to oral histories as is proven by two similar talks I gave on the wicked problem of oral history access and reuse.5<\/a><\/sup> The one was presented in the summer of 2023 and the other was presented in the spring of 2024. I decided to drop ‘value’ from this graphic because value was something that was very specific to my work with the National Trust, due to their collection policy not including oral histories or any other types of intangible heritage.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Reusing oral history in GLAM: a wicked problem

– OHD_PRS_0265<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Iraq Symposium talk

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wp. 004 <\/mark><\/em>Once I started constructing this portfolio, the areas were reduced once more to the adaptive maintenance required to fulfil public expectations of access, and the barriers to maintenance. Although each situation will differ in their formulation of the wicked problem, I believe these two areas are starting points for thinking about the maintenance of access to oral histories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From Shelves to Servers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Year<\/th>Tech Ethics<\/th>Tech<\/th>OHT<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
1981<\/td><\/td><\/td>TAPE system <\/td><\/tr>
1983<\/td><\/td>CD released in Europe and USA<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
–<\/td>–<\/td>–<\/td>–<\/td><\/tr>
1991<\/td><\/td><\/td>Project Jukebox (funded by Apple Library of Tomorrow Grant)<\/td><\/tr>
1992<\/td><\/td>Mini Disc<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
1993<\/td>Copyright Duration Directive (EU)<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
1994<\/td><\/td>Web Mail is used in CERN<\/td>Steven Spielberg starts the SHOAH institute<\/td><\/tr>
1995<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
1996 <\/td>WIPO Copyright Treaty<\/td>The Internet Archive<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
1997<\/td><\/td>Wi-Fi<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
1998<\/td>Digital Millennium Copyright Act (USA) [also had a big effect on the right to repair]<\/td>Google<\/td>Interclipper demonstration at OHA conference <\/td><\/tr>
1999<\/td><\/td>First SD card<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2000<\/td>The Dot-com Bubble bursts<\/td><\/td>VOAHA <\/td><\/tr>
2001<\/td>Creative commons is founded<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2002<\/td><\/td>Zoom H2 Handy Recorder<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2003<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2004<\/td><\/td>Vimeo ; Facebook<\/td>Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project<\/td><\/tr>
2005<\/td><\/td>YouTube<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2006<\/td><\/td>Twitter<\/td>SHOAH collection moves to the University of Southern California<\/td><\/tr>
2007<\/td><\/td>iPhone ; SoundCloud<\/td>Project Jukebox colabs with Testimony Software ; Montreal Life Stories kicks off<\/td><\/tr>
2008<\/td><\/td><\/td>FRISCH : First version of OHMS<\/td><\/tr>
2009<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2010<\/td>France enacts the right to be forgotten <\/td>Instagram<\/td>Crash of VOAHA<\/td><\/tr>
2011<\/td><\/td>Zoom<\/td>VOAHA II ;
OHMS becomes open source ; Stories Matter is released <\/td><\/tr>
2012<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2013<\/td>Edward Snowden <\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2014<\/td>European Court of Justice legally solidifies the “right to be forgotten” is a human right ; First NFT <\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2015<\/td><\/td><\/td>Australian Generations oral history project ends <\/td><\/tr>
2016<\/td>Cambridge Analytica<\/td>TikTok<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2017<\/td>Obama Deep Fake<\/td><\/td>UOSH starts<\/td><\/tr>
2018<\/td>GDPR is implemented<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2019<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2020<\/td>Covid-19 Pandemic<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2021<\/td><\/td>Chat-GPT<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
2022<\/td><\/td><\/td>UOSH ends<\/td><\/tr>
2023<\/td><\/td><\/td>British Library hack <\/td><\/tr>
2024<\/td>European Union adopts some right to repair rules. <\/td><\/td>OHA conference on Oral History and AI<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Timeline of technologies<\/strong><\/em> – OHD_SPS_0310<\/a> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 005<\/mark><\/em> Doug Boyd ends his chapter in the book Oral history and Digital Humanities<\/em> with an anecdote about his daughter coming across a box of cassettes and not recognising the analogue medium. After Boyd explained what the tapes were and how they were used, she simply replied ‘I just want to click on it to listen.’7<\/a><\/sup> This is a useful insight into how developments in technology have affected expectations of access. Where before you had to go to a record shop to buy a CD, cassette, or vinyl; now, nearly all music is available to you via the comfort of your phone. Similarly, in previous decades you had to travel to an archive to access recordings, now oral histories and other archival material are expected to be available online (especially after the Covid-19 pandemic). Digital technologies have created the idea that access to data, information and creative content should be instant, which has also resulted in the structure of oral history repositories moving from shelves to servers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Page from Alien in Residence – OHD_RPT_0035<\/a> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 006<\/mark><\/em> This move from shelves to servers is a form of adaptive maintenance. Adaptive maintenance is a basic form of maintenance found in software engineering alongside corrective, perfective and preventive maintenance.8<\/a><\/sup> These are mainly used within the field of software engineering, but I have found the idea of adaptive maintenance a helpful term within the context of this wicked problem. Adaptive maintenance means adapting a structure to make it fit an environment which has changed.9<\/a><\/sup> The move from shelves to server within the context of oral history archives and repositories is adaptive maintenance because it is adapting to meet the new public expectation of access – ‘I just want to click on it to listen.’ The most common form of adaptive maintenance is the digitisation of oral histories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

wp. 007 <\/mark><\/em>The digitisation of oral history consists of making a digital copy of analogue recordings. My audit of National Trust recordings which had not yet been catalogued by the British Library demonstrated that digitisation is not a one-time activity.10<\/a><\/sup> The audit revealed a wide array of formats including CDs, cassettes, MiniDiscs, and an unknown digital file type, which might have to be converted in order to be accessed. Sadly, the large digitisation project at the British Library, Unlocking our Sound History or UOSH, <\/em>had just finished,11<\/a><\/sup> and so much of the resources needed to digitise were no longer easily available.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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C1168 uncatalogued items – OHD_WRT_0276<\/em><\/strong><\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 008<\/mark><\/em> Alongside the digitisation of analogue recordings and associated data, adaptive maintenance within oral history archives and repositories, as I have previously discussed, involves moving from shelves to servers. The entire structure surrounding the material, the catalogue, and the storage location, must become digital, leaving carbon paper and index cards behind. Rob Perks writes about how he experienced this during his time at National Life Stories, the oral history charity that is situated within the British Library. He notes a ‘painful and protracted’ move from analogue to digital at the British Library, including the acquisition of a digital management system, the development of a new accessioning system, and the training required to ensure staff gained sufficient skills and knowledge to implement the new digital content correctly.12<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

wp. 009<\/mark><\/em> Adaptive maintenance does not remove the existence of analogue material or systems. Digitisation rarely replaces analogue systems completely and the rate of adoption will differ radically between institutions and organisations. This can be referred to as the \u2018digital divide.\u2019 In the early 2000s, the digital divide primarily referred to the access to hardware, software, and the internet. More recently it has been extended to encompass people\u2019s digital skills, so their ability to use technology, the frequency they use it, and how much it is integrated into their lives.13<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Collection of photographs of the National Trust Collections’ forms – OHD_COL_0272<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/em><\/strong> Collection of photographs of The British Library<\/em> – OHD_COL_0271<\/a> <\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 010<\/mark><\/em> This uneven adoption of digital systems often leads to hybrid systems, consisting of analogue and digital components, as I saw in the office of National Life Stories.14<\/a><\/sup> Nor does this adaptive maintenance eradicate issues experienced with analogue material such as ‘folios [that have] fallen behind books stack.’15<\/a><\/sup> This follows a basic rule of invention and development: ‘To invent the sailing ship or steamer is to invent the shipwreck.’16<\/a><\/sup> Therefore, after digitisation archivists have to deal with dropped analogue folios and the digital equivalent – dead links.17<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Zoom comment on digital archives – OHD_SSH_0146<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Audit of NLHF oral history projects – OHD_COL_0278<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 011<\/mark><\/em> In addition to dead links during my research period there were also multiple IT incidents at the National Trust,18<\/a><\/sup> a cyber-attack at The British Library,19<\/a><\/sup> websites that were not working,20<\/a><\/sup> and technology that became obsolete.21<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Screenshots of NT IT incidents – OHD_SSH_0292<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The British Library down<\/strong><\/em> – OHD_SSH_0313<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Screenshot of my access being blocked to the Northumberland Archive catalogue<\/strong><\/em> – OHD_SSH_0307<\/a> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Jamboard dies<\/strong><\/em> – OHD_SSH_0311<\/a> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 012 <\/mark><\/em>This is not an argument against the move from shelves to servers, after all my cat also weed on my paper PhD archive, causing me to throw some archival material away.22<\/a><\/sup> This was not a great loss though, because I had already digitised the material. I offer these examples of breakdowns to highlight the perils of any structure, digital or analogue, and how these need to be considered equally. Digital technology is not magic but simply another form of a structure and all structures need maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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OHD_PRT_0038<\/a><\/em> Archive Box 1<\/strong><\/s><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 013<\/mark><\/em> The change in society\u2019s expectation of access (‘I just want to click on it to listen’) has led to a mass transformation of the oral history structures into hybrid systems with new additional forms of maintenance labour. In addition, we also need to consider how this change in expectations has not only influenced the systems which create access, but also the feelings we have around access. As Almut Leh writes, ‘the digital representation of original documents has considerably promoted their dissemination and thus their visibility.’ This results in them being more easily accessible and capable of being ingested and interpreted by machines on a mass scale.23<\/a><\/sup> Outside of oral history, this increase in access has had significant consequences on the ethics, laws, and guidelines which surround data management, which in turn have affected how oral histories can be accessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wp. 014<\/mark><\/em> However, these laws were not explicitly made for oral histories and so how they should be applied can be confusing. Those who maintain the access to oral histories now also need to rethink how they classify and handle material. Through my research, specifically my work during the placements, I identified three areas which have been affected by the changing expectations of access: ownership, personal information, and sensitive content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Ownership<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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wp. 015<\/mark><\/em> The ownership of oral history and materials in general has changed a lot over the decades as the internet has made sharing and duplicating material a lot easier. My copyright audit of the National Trust\u2019s sound collection illustrated the history of oral history and copyright.24<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NT BL Report – OHD_RPT_0274<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 016<\/mark><\/em> Currently, in the UK and most of the West an oral history is understood as a recorded performance, and therefore the performer, i.e. those speaking on the recording hold copyright over their voices. Those recorded must sign their copyright over to the relevant party. In most cases, this will be the archive or repository holding the oral history, if a recording is to be reused. Importantly, this rule of copyright applies to every recorded oral history, even those recorded before this law was enacted. This is why I created the foundations for the Trust to develop a workflow that could be used to obtain copyright or to confirm that the oral history is an orphan work.25<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orphan Work<\/summary>\n

wp. 017<\/mark><\/em> A work is considered \u2018orphaned\u2019 when the original creator is not contactable or not known. In the case of oral history, a recording becomes an orphan work when the speaker was born 120 years ago (some organisations, like the British Library, the cut-off point is 100 years instead of 120.) In some cases, however, it might be preferable to try to contact the next of kin in cases where third parties are mentioned in the recording.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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From the Research Room guide – OHD_RPT_0195<\/a> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Personal Information <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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wp. 018<\/mark><\/em> The collection of personal information has become increasingly controversial with the rise of social media. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2016 became a particular poignant example of large companies using their customers’ personal data as if it was their own asset.26<\/a><\/sup> Since the 2010s, laws have been created to protect people’s personal information, with the classic example being the EU\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which became effective in May 2018, replacing the Data Protection Directive of 1995. The GDPR was later adopted by the UK after its formal exit from the EU in 2020. Many data protection laws around the world have either been modelled on the GDPR, or the EU\u2019s Data Protection Directive. While some data protection laws, like India\u2019s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, apply only to digital data, the GDPR covers all data, including oral history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wp. 019 <\/mark><\/em>Oral histories generally collect two forms of personal data: the personal information of the interviewee on the permission forms, and the recording of the interview. The former is easy to handle under the GDPR because what data is collected is clearly understood as personal data: name, address, contact information etc. When I was designing the Research Room at Seaton Delaval Hall, all the forms I designed had to follow the same GDPR guidelines. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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From the Research Room guide – OHD_RPT_0195<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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wp. 020<\/mark><\/em> The management of the interview recording is slightly more complicated. Data protection laws like the GDPR were designed to protect people’s privacy, but oral history is recorded for public knowledge. This means oral history is personal information for public consumption, which does not fit GDPR’s framework. This causes some confusion under archivists and those with similar professions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wp. 021<\/mark><\/em> Data protection never occupied a central position in my placements, but it was always present. I researched it while I developed the Research Room for Seaton Delaval Hall and the takedown policy for Archives at NCBS. The general advice I started giving people when asked about data protection, was to adopt a continuous awareness of the legislation around data. This is admittedly very basic, but I believe it captures the general aim of the regulation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n