{"id":3293,"date":"2023-03-08T15:06:38","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T15:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hannahjameslouwerse.com\/?p=3293\/"},"modified":"2023-03-08T15:06:38","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T15:06:38","slug":"ohd_rpt_0256-options-for-making-oral-histories-accessible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/hjameslouwerse2\/2023\/03\/08\/ohd_rpt_0256-options-for-making-oral-histories-accessible\/","title":{"rendered":"OHD_RPT_0256 Options for making oral histories accessible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tech options for making oral history recordings accessible<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

V1. January 30 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hannah James Louwerse, Archives at NCBS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making oral history recordings accessible to people has been infamously difficult, with the oral historian Michael Frisch referring to the issue as \u201coral history\u2019s deep dark secret\u201d. There have been many attempts to solve this problem with some being more successful than others. By analysing the history of oral history technologies one can see how using technology to access to oral history recordings depends on three factors: maintenance, ethics, and user-friendliness. This short report will go through each of these factors bringing examples of oral history technologies to explain what you should look for when seeking a solution to putting oral history recordings online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Maintenance<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

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

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    1. Tailor-made, in house development and maintenance<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Creating your own digital oral history archiving system allows it to be perfectly tailor to your collections needs. However, it also means the maintenance of this system is solely in your hands, which can be very risky, especially when working within grant cycles. Projects like the Visual Oral\/Aural History Archive (VOAHA) <\/em>created by Sherna Berger Gluck at California State University, Long Beach and Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database<\/em> developed by Doug Boyd built tailor-made technologies specifically for their existing oral history collections, either developing the technology themselves or hired someone to do it for them. At the time they were the height of technology, but when the money ran out there was none left to maintain the archives\/databases. Both VOAHA<\/em> and Boyd\u2019s Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project Digital Media Database <\/em>were \u201cdigitally abandoned\u201d and left vulnerable to inevitable technical obsolescence and online hackers (Boyd and Larson, 2014, p. 7; Boyd, 2014, p. 90). In the end the two projects were absorbed by their respective universities\u2019 libraries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      1.2   Use existing specialist oral history software<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

      1.3 Use existing mainstream third party platforms<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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