Oral History in the Digital Age

This week’s blog question applies to my project in a couple of interesting ways.  The very nature of oral history makes it difficult to preserve.  The act of transcribing it often alters its meaning, so simply writing the interview down is an insufficient means by which to preserve it.  Similarly, another issue that plagues oral histories is that they are often difficult to access (by having to physically go to a library or archive and listen to the recording there), and not readily available to scholars or researchers who increasingly want to access resources from their computers at home.  So when options for digital preservation (digital recording, uploading audio recordings to the internet, etc.) became available, many were excited at the prospect of a solution to some of the issues surrounding the preservation of oral histories. 

The Internet has facilitated access to oral history recordings in a way that housing them at physical libraries could never have hoped to achieve.  According to one oral history manual, “interviews will usually record more ‘visitors’ in a single month on the Internet than in all the years they sat on archive shelves combined” (Ritchie, 2003, p.80).  However every manual I’ve read for this project also cautions against using only virtual means for the presentation and preservation of recordings.  They all stress the impermanence of websites and the speed at which digital recordings deteriorate with each reproduction or change in file format.  The Oral History Association in the US’s website even states, in its Principles and Best Practices that “the obsolescence of all media formats should be assumed and planned for” (2009). 

I had initially planned to use a website as the sole vehicle for the presentation of my oral history project.  I also hadn’t even planned to transcribe any of the interviews, as I don’t believe that these kinds of stories would be as effective if they are absorbed in written form.   But after reading a number of cautionary tales, I have opted to work into my research proposal plans to transcribe all of the interviews and to donate the hard copies to the Toronto Public Library, as apparently they’re always looking to expand their local history collections.

My research into the project’s legality and ethics has also revealed to me that there exist a number of copyright issues surrounding oral history recordings.  The interviewer must obtain a “deed of gift” that allows the interviewee to literally gift their life story over to the interviewer, who then must outline how they intend to use it.  There are a number of complicated clauses that can be exercised, some of which, for example, dictate that the story might only be used after the interviewee’s death, or sometimes might only be used up until the interviewee’s death.  If the recording is going to be accessible in perpetuity on a website, then a number of particular agreements must be negotiated. 

In terms of preserving the digital video recordings, I unfortunately lack the web savvy to do anything so fancy as encoding data into other web material, but the Oral History Association has developed a separate branch of its organization, dedicated to establishing digital standards and practices.  Their website, Oral History in the Digital Age, has a wealth of resources available that deal with the preservation of these born-digital artifacts.  They suggest things like using open, standard file formats and codecs, to ensure that the files will be accessible in the future (Van Malssen, 2012).  For the purposes of this research proposal, I will be adhering to all of the preservation criteria that they suggest.

References:

Principles and Best Practices. (n.d.). Oral History Association. Retrieved November 21, 2013, from http://www.oralhistory.org/about/principles-and-practices/

Ritchie, D. A. (2003). Doing oral history : a practical guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Van Malssen, K. (2012). Digital video preservation and oral history. In D. Boyd, S. Cohen, B. Rakerd, & D. Rehberger (Eds.), Oral history in the digital age. Institute of Library and Museum Services. Retrieved fromhttp://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/06/digital-video-preservation-and-oral-history/.