Navigating Access to Legacy Oral History Collections
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The J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah has a robust oral history program, with over 32 projects spanning 1 25 linear feet with topics as varied as the first transcontinental railroad to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Unfortunately, as with any oral history program, providing access has not been without its challenges. Issues have included interviews that have inadequate waivers, missing final drafts, nonexistent transcriptions, and mismatched audio and transcripts. Moreover, providing online access presented privacy, ethical and copyright concerns. By working collaboratively with the American West Center, legal counsel, and IT services, the library has been able to overcome these challenges in order to provide improved access to our oral history collections. In this session our oral history team will explore the above problems and present the solutions that have enabled the University to provide more complete access to these one-of-a-kind treasures.
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Navigating Access to Legacy Oral History Collections
- 1. Navigating Access to Legacy Oral History Collections Jessica Breiman, Special Collections, Marriott Library Julia Huddleston, Special Collections Marriott Library Leighton Quarles, American West Center University of Utah Image by Irwin Scott
- 2. Attendees will be able to: â˘Anticipate and plan for obstacles to oral history access projects â˘Understand the impact of such a project on partners inside and outside of library â˘Describe policies to be evaluated, created, and updated in the process of such a project Goals
- 3. Roles Collection, access, preservation Challenges Waivers, formats,intellectual organization, partnerships and turnover, Communication Confronting the Challenges Online access and media streaming, policies and procedures, best practices Outline
- 4. Roles
- 5. Special Collections @ the U â˘Manuscripts â˘Western Americana â˘Rare Books â˘Multimedia Archives (Photographs and AV) â˘University Archives and Records Management
- 6. Oral History Collections at the U Generally arranged by project ⢠18 projects with transcripts and audio ⢠27 Audio/Visual only ⢠29 transcript only
- 7. The American West Center A center devoted to public humanities in the West ⢠Conduit for oral histories to the Marriott Library ⢠Founded in 1964 ⢠Official home is the the College of Humanities ⢠Interdepartmental staff ⢠Multiple funding sources ⢠Tasks: Decide on projects, obtain funding, conduct and process interviews, send to library
- 8. AWC Projects
- 9. AWC and Marriott Library: 48 Years of Partnership
- 10. Oral History Staff and Training â˘Interviewers â Generally 1-2 depending on project funding â Combination of paid staff, volunteers and graduate students â˘Transcriptionists â Generally 2-3 at a time, part-time, volunteer or graduate assistants â˘Training â Has historically been informal, depending on the director â Will be addressed in new policies and procedures manual
- 11. The Interview Collection Process â˘Contact â˘Interview conducted â waiver signed â˘Transcription â˘Transcript sent to interviewee for editing â˘Interview finalized â˘Summary written â˘Interviews submitted to
- 12. Workflows ⢠Collections deposited in library; transcripts go to Manuscripts, audio/video goes to Multimedia Archives ⢠Collections processed, finding aids created and placed online; MARC records updated ⢠Digitization priorities established; digital items moved into digital preservation system ⢠Metadata team creates metadata conforming to Mountain West Digital Library Dublin Core Application Profile; item placed in digital library
- 13. Services @ the U â˘Preservation â˘Processing and metadata â˘Access â˘Reference and Instruction â˘Personal copies â˘Transcription services/funding
- 14. Challenges
- 15. Challenges: Access ⢠Obstacles to online access â Metadata â Copyright ⢠Legacy collections designated as ârestrictedâ ⢠Collections with no transcripts ⢠Findability: No shared web presence ⢠Backlog
- 16. Challenges: Preservation ⢠Large video files ⢠File naming and formats ⢠Communicate with digital archivist ⢠Prioritization
- 17. Challenges: Processing â˘File numbering â two different systems inherited by predecessors â˘Finding aids separated by department â˘Technical metadata is lost in translation â˘Backlog!
- 18. Challenges: Waivers â˘Early waivers were very general: â˘Did not anticipate online access â˘Growing complexity and lack of unified use âI willingly contribute my testimony recorded on [date/year] to the Library of the University of Utah to be used for scholarly purposes.â
- 20. Missing Waivers â˘Another big problem is some collections were missing waivers entirely â No copyright has been transferred â Increased risk of privacy violations â Ethical concerns
- 21. An example of an interviewee who backed out of the project
- 22. Challenges: The partnership â˘Joint server access â˘New accessions & digital upload of interviews â˘Staff turnover â˘Lack of policy & procedure documents â˘Funding
- 24. Online Access â˘Four collections are available fully online â Another is partially available, due to permissions â˘Two more have been digitized and are awaiting metadata â This is the most time consuming part of the process â Can take several months â˘Digital objects are linked in the finding aid
- 25. Use Agreement I acknowledge and agree that all information I obtain as a result of accessing any oral history provided by the University of Utahâs Marriott Library shall be used only for historical or scholarly or academic research purposes, and not for commercial purposes. I understand that any other use of the materials is not authorized by the University of Utah and may exceed the scope of permission granted to the University of Utah by the interviewer or interviewee. I may request permission for other uses, in writing to Special Collections at the Marriott Library, which the University of Utah may choose grant, in its sole discretion. I agree to defend, indemnify and hold the University of Utah and its Marriott Library harmless for and against any actions or claims that relate to my improper use of materials provided by the University of Utah.
- 26. Communication and Partnership â˘Consult with Campus Legal Counsel â˘Collaboration with Digital Operations and Application Programming â˘Establish personal relationships â˘Establish parameters of partnership â˘Document and make clear workflows within each unit
- 27. Policies and Procedures â˘Training manual for interviewers and transcriptionists â˘Policies for access and digitization (establish the queue!) â˘Preservation policies (filetypes/sizes) â˘File naming conventions â˘Regularly scheduled review of waivers
- 29. Shared Spaces
- 30. What We Have Learned â˘Keep reviewing why youâre doing what youâre doing â How can we improve access? â˘Communicate between divisions â˘Keep your successors in mind
Editor's Notes
- Archives across the country are struggling with how to reconcile collections in which many different formats exist Our goals in presenting about this topic are that participants, whether archivists, oral historians, or librarians will be able to anticipate and plan for some of the obstacles theyâll face when starting oral history access projects We want attendees to understand the impact of such access projects on partners and other departments in the library, including cataloging, web development, and IT. We hope that participants will be able to think about and discuss potential policies that will need to be evaluated, created, and updated in the process of such a project
- Roles - the roles and services that the library provides, and also that of the American West Center, a research institute on campus that is the main provider of oral histories to Special Collections Challenges - In the second section we will talk about some of the challenges we have faced in providing more methods of access to these oral history collections, In the final section, we will discuss how weâve been addressing these challenges, and what we are still working on but have yet to quite solve
- Special Collections at the University of Utah is divided up into several departments. The reason I bring this up is to highlight how independently each of these departments operates. Each department has different managers, different ways of accessioning and processing collections, and different workflows. Juli and I come from very different departments and the collaboration that we have initiated is really very different from the usual operating system.
- We arrange our oral histories topically according to projects-- these include ethnic and religious minorities, coal mining, veterans, outdoor recreation, politics, the history of the U and even covering recent topics such as Occupy Wall Street. The oral history program at the University of Utah began in 1966, nearly fifty years ago, when the University received a grant from the tobacco heiress Doris Duke to conduct interviews with American Indians in the west. Since then our program has grown considerably: We have 74 projects 18 with AV and Transcripts 27 with just audio or video 29 with just transcripts Some of these projects have hundreds of interviews in them. Oral histories are among our most heavily used archival material.
- Leighton Founded in 1964, the American West Center is a small research center devoted to public humanities in the West. Housed over the years in both the College of Social and Behavioral Science and the College of Humanities, the Centerâs mission has never changed--to study the American West and its peoples, conduct research and develop archives for stakeholders ranging from Native American nations to the City of Salt Lake to the Federal Government, to train future professionals, and most of all, to help broaden and deepen public understanding of the Western past through collection of oral history interviews. Funding: the Center receives its base funding from the College of Humanities and the HIstory Department, but sustains itself mostly through outside grants and contracts. Leadership: The director, a professor drawn from History, Anthropology and POlitical Science to date but most often History, serves a four-year renewable term The ASsistant Director is a graduate student and thus serves two to five years usually. we have had assistant directors from several fields. I work in history, the previous assistant director was in creative writing, and we work closely with the environmental humanities program. The Assistant Director is the primary point of contact with the Library. From a practical standpoint, the Center acts as a conduit for oral history interviews to the Marriott. The director of the AWC, in consultation with and often in conjunction with the Associate Dean of Special Collections at the Marriott, decides what the next oral history project will be and how large it will be, and is responsible for obtaining the funds to actually collect and process the interviews before passing them to the Marriott where they will be preserved and become available to the public.
- Oral History and the AWC: originally created to publish the magazine of the Western History Association, the American West Center found its long term mission in 1966 when the center received responsibility for a sizeable grant from tobacco heiress doris Duke--the University of Utah being one of only six institutions to receive the Duke grants--to record Native Americans telling their history in their own words. This project, which encompassed nearly 1500 interviews, provided the reason for the successful partnership between the American WEst Center and the Marriott Library. The Centerâs initial oral history mission has since broadened to include a wide range of oral history projects. these projects, which started with the ethnic oral history project in the 1970s, designed to capture the experience of utahâs remarkably diverse population, have over the years grown to encompass a variety of topics, such as the outdoor recreation activities such as skiing and climbing which have a significant impact on utahâs economy and culture. In 1999 the Center began collecting World WAr II veteransâ oral histories. Dubbed the âSaving the Legacy project,â this collection numbers over 600 interviews. Our ongoing veteransâ collections now include iraq and afghanistan, and most recently, an attempt to gather a more total oral history of the Vietnam War focused not just on veterans, but also on civilian participants in the conflict, refugees, and even antiwar protesters. Other oral history projects have centered on everything from land use and cultural perceptions of Utah and its geography to emergent social issues such as the Occupy movement. In all, Center staff have collected over 7,000 oral histories! As an outgrowth of the Doris Duke Native American oral history project, the Center became involved early on in helping create tribal archives for a number of Native American nations all over the WEst including the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Uintah-Ouray and Ute Mountain Ute tribes, Tohono Oâodham Nation, and several others. the Duke project also spawned a number of educational initiatives, including a Native American history curriculum used in multiple institutions in the US and Canada. For much of its existence the Center has also worked with land management agencies, local communities and Native nations to provide historical and policy analyses on environmental and land use issues and provided expert testimony in numerous cases. Community engagement is a key part of what we are about. the AWC also produces and sponsors lectures, symposia, exhibits, and conferences for public audiences. Now entering its sixth decade, the American West Center continues its multifaceted mission while serving as a valuable training ground for publicly engaged scholars.
- Leighton: This slide approved by Greg Thompson... The core of what weâre discussing today, of course, is the relationship between the Center and the library. The American WEst Center and the Marriott Library have had a close relationship since 1967 when Floyd OâNeil and Gregory C. Thompson, two western history Graduate Students at the University of Utah, became involved in the Doris Duke oral history project. Dr. Thompson, who is now associate dean of special collections at the Marriott, has been integral to the partnershipâs success over the past five decades. Dr. OâNeil has been no less critical, ever since his unofficial assumption of leadership duties at the Center in the late 1960s. At 87, he still comes to work! This personal partnership, the longevity of which is best shown perhaps by these wonderful photos of Dr. THompson, has been the salvation of the Center, which a number of times in its long history has teetered on the edge of oblivion. it has, however, also meant that the AWC/Marriott partnership remains unofficial.
- Leighton Part of the Centerâs mission is to act as a training ground for publicly engaged scholars. AS such, AWC interviewers are usually staff or affiliates. The director, graduate student staff, and professors affiliated with the Center on a temporary basis all conduct interviews, along with a small number of paid professional contractors. For example, on average the AWC employs 1 or 2 paid interviewers for each project. This number is of course funding-related. For the Saving the Legacy oral history project, which focused on WWII veterans and enjoyed substantial financial backing, they employed 5. Projects can also dovetail with classes. For example, former director Matt Basso is teaching an oral history class and has started an oral history project on aging in Utah. His students have collected between thirty and forty interviews, which the Center will process and submit to the Marriott. Volunteers also periodically conduct interviews. WHoever conducts the interview, it is important to ensure the production of as good an interview as possible. INterviewers need to be prepared, as do their subjects. The AWC uses the Oral History ASsociationâs guidelines and works hard to ensure that our interviews set a high standard. The Library does not have quality control over what we give them, so itâs incumbent upon us to make the interviews as good as we possibly can. Transcriptionists, like interviewers, can be staff or volunteer. Currently AWC employs two long-term, part-time transcriptionists, one of whom is also an interviewer. Graduate students moving through the Center also transcribe, but infrequently due to the need for a dedicated, experienced transcriptionist with an ear for detail and context. This is an especially significant concern when transcribing interviews with members of specialized communities, such as veterans, scientists, or others who work in a jargon-rich environment, and even with concerns such as accents. Transcription is potentially a significant bottleneck. Our best transcriptionist can do a one-hour interview in perhaps two and a half hours, which is unusual. The best transcriptionists are worth their weight in gold and we pay them as much as our limited budget allows. Training: Interviewer training is informal and varies depending on the director/assistant directorâs level of interest and funding available. The current program involves both practical and theoretical readings along with hands-on practice and supervision by the assistant director. Training also varies according to the interviewerâs experience level. The current director and his predecessor are both highly trained and personally invested in oral history. As a service to the community and a teaching tool for staff, the Center conducts an oral history workshop once per year.
- [Leighton] Step one is finding people to interview. This requires a substantial amount of research and is often dictated by how the project was conceived of. For example, the Centerâs current project on the Vietnam War began with veterans, using the University of Utahâs annual veteransâ recognition program as a place to start looking for interviewees. Following up with advertising and talking to people in the Salt Lake Vietnamese community we have been able to substantially expand our interviewee pool and enrich the project. It is important to remember, however, that some subjects are trickier than others. Dealing with minority populations and people with a sense of alienation from wider society requires care and a commitment to making people feel at ease and conveying our wish to help them tell their stories, not do it for them. Before conducting an interview, the interviewer secures a statement of informed consent from the interviewee, explaining and discussing the waiverâs details and ensuring that both parties clearly understand and are comfortable with the procedure. Following completion, the interview is sent to the assistant director, who assigns it to a transcriptionist. Upon transcription, the interview is sent to the interviewee (physically or digitally, depending on arrangement with the interviewee) for editing, with an emphasis on correcting factual errors and taking care to preserve original meaning. The draft is sent back to the AWC, where the assistant director makes all corrections and produces a final draft, which is sent to the interviewee along with a copy of the audio if requested. This final draft is formatted in accordance with the Marriott Libraryâs standards. The transcriptionist (or the assistant director) also writes a brief summary of the interview to be placed in the finding aid. The final product sent to the Marriott Library consists of the edited draft, the final draft, and the summary, along with 16-bit waveform audio and, if it is a video interview, a lossless .mov video of the interview. There are a few possible bumps in the road. The most significant is that interviewees may never return their drafts due to busy schedules or just absentmindedness. To combat this problem we use a clause in the waiver mandating that after sixty days from being sent, the interview is considered final and may be submitted. Nonetheless, we often give interviewees up to a year. A future recommendation might be to change the wiaver so that upon an intervieweeâs death, or if they move away from the address they give, the 60-day clause goes into effect. A thing to remember with how oral history works is that oral history is conceived of as a democratic process. We aim to give people the opportunity to tell their story and take an active hand in its preservation and presentation. Sometimes that means a loss of efficiency. all that took me 10 minutes to deliver.
- The interviews are deposited in the library quarterly. The AV component goes to the AV Archives, and Transcripts go to Manuscripts Each department processes them and makes sure they are fully useable. Finding aids are created and uploaded to Northwest Digital Archives site. To be clear, in current workflows, there is one finding aid for the transcript collection, and one finding aid for the audiovisual content. This is a workflow that may be changed with our collections, but that has been the practice so far, mostly due to the fact that there are different numbering systems for the transcript and the AV items. Each oral history collection, if it has a finding aid, has a MARC record that appears in the catalog as well. Digitization priorities are determined, if necessary although More and more items are coming in as born digital items. After digitization occurs, items go to the metadata team to prepare them to be loaded into our digital library, and the raw files are moved into our digital preservation system.
- Preservation (digital + physical) We provide physical preservation of all formats, and we provide digital preservation through archival servers with tape backups and a digital preservation system called Rosetta Processing and Metadata On the AV side, there can be a bit more to processing collections to make them ready for the archival servers.I do file renaming, appropriate foldering levels, and assure that the filetypes are appropriate for digital preservation. For the last year or so, I have been working on prepping a very large oral history collection of audiotapes to be digitized. It will be put online when itâs ready, but before I even send it to our digitizing department, I have to make sure that all the oral histories are in numerical order, so they can be matched up with the corresponding transcript,and that I send them up with the appropriate metadata. Access (online + in person) Access to transcripts is always available in our reading room. Access to AV depends on if the item is digitized. If it is still on tape cassette or reel to reel, we need prior notice before providing access so we can digitize it. Reference + Instruction We provide reference services any time we are open, as well as by phone and email. We try and provide instruction as needed or requested by professors, but weâre currently very short staffed and we canât always provide more than a one shot instruction session, which is not ideal for our students. Personal copies (free for family members) We can provide personal copies of just about anything, and those copies, whether audio, video, or transcripts, are free to direct family members. Funding One of the things that is unique about our relationship with the American West Center is that we provide some funding for the oral histories that go into our collection.
- Juli
- Obstacles to online access Allowing interviewees to edit a transcript is standard procedure in the oral history world but it does not mean audio gets edited, because we just donât have that kind of time. However, a lot of times waivers refer only to the edited version of an oral history and what the library can do with that, so weâve had to navigate a little bit differently when it comes to putting the audio of oral histories online. This waiver of copyright is really important and dictates what we can do with an oral history, which we will talk about in a few minutes. Original cataloging also takes a good deal of time, so even if we have something digitized, it often gets stuck in the queue for original cataloging. Legacy collections deemed as ârestrictedâ We also have inherited several collections from our predecessors simply marked as restricted. These legacy collections take a good deal of investigation before we can determine why they were marked as restricted and whether that label is really accurate. Collections that have not been transcribed -- we have lots of collections where we have audio or video and no transcript, although our patrons generally prefer to be able to skim through transcripts. Findability: No shared web presence People are very often confused about how to get access to our collections. The AWC has one website within the university; the library has another; and our finding aids get located in a site called the Northwest Digital Archives project Digitizing time for AV No AV materials digitize at less than real time; it can take hours to digitize an oral history on audio or video. We are starting to get more collections already in digital formats, but for our legacy collections and the staff we currently have, it will likely take us years before all of those collections are in digital formats.
- Large video files In the oral history realm, it is becoming vastly more common to make video oral histories, and especially HD video, which results in quite a large file. Sometimes people are unaware of how expensive digital space is, and especially archival digital space. The AWC recently purchased HD video equipment for their interviews, which is great for the patron, but puts a lot of funding pressure on the library because the files are so big and we donât necessarily have the digital room or money to spend to purchase more digital room to preserve these files. We are currently discussing within the library is how to approach this. We cannot ingest every oral history in this kind of huge file format. We will likely be asking the American West Center to prioritize some interviews for video and leave the rest as audio or to request money for digital preservation in their grant applications. File naming and formats Part of this issue is really about how to disseminate information to the oral history interviewers. Sometimes interviewers donât understand that we need certain file types and file naming systems for digital preservation. Interviewers sometimes record the interview in a MP3 format, which is a very compressed audio file format. This compressed file is really lacking the quality of something we want to preserve; it would be much better if all the files were uncompressed WAV format files. Sometimes there is an issue with file naming and foldering, which is really vital for digital files because they often get separated from their CD cases or hard drives, so we need that kind of detail to determine what the file really is. All of this leads to a bit more complication, especially because there is another entity to communicate with: digital preservation archivist, who is actually housed within our IT department
- Numbering the AWC uses their own numbering system, which is not used by the Manuscripts Division AV decided to keep the AWC number system The two departments didnât communicate when this decision was made, but it would be too time consuming to renumber so we try to intellectually link the two items Finding Aids separated by dept. As a result, patrons are confused by separate EADs for transcripts/audio components, may not be aware that there are both transcripts and audio Metadata that is lost in translation e.g. technical metadata from video cameras & recording equipment about the files. this information help us down the road for digital preservation Backlog! Not all of our collections are processed or have finding aids. Awareness has been helping and weâve been prioritizing the projects that are requested. AV digitization and preservation is a time consuming task--- audio cannot be digitized faster than real time. For context, some interviews are 2 hours, and some are close to 100 hours.
- Weâre lucky that most of our oral histories have usable waivers, however in the 40 years that weâve been collecting oral history projects, the waivers have changed significantly. This text is from a 1988 interview and does not mention copyright transfer, reproduction, and does not anticipate technological advances. More troubling is that the same waiver was recycled by a mis-informed interviewer as recently as 2006, well after we knew about the complexities presented by providing online access, audio files, copyright and more. It is important to have the right waiver for the right project copyright transfer items being put online possibly shared copyright depending on the grant (Utah Humanities Foundation)
- Juli
- Perhaps more troubling are the interviews that lack waivers entirely. When I stepped into my role, I inherited two filing cabinets full of interviews that were missing waivers (or had other problems), and had been deemed inaccessible. This assumption was based on the lack of copyright transfer from the interviewee, but this is not correct. We can make interviews available to researchers in the reading room, as long as it falls under fair use. We do, however, want the waiver, and interviewer canât decide not to collect one. However old interviews that have been gathering dust can be made available as a last resort. We have to be more careful with these interviews, which is difficult given the volume of interviews we have. Another challenge is when someone rescinds their consent prior to the interview being deposited in the library. Here is an example of an upset interviewee:
- Juli
- Preservation (digital + physical) We provide physical preservation of all formats, and we provide digital preservation through archival servers with tape backups and a digital preservation system called Rosetta Processing and Metadata On the AV side, there can be a bit more to processing collections to make them ready for the archival servers.I do file renaming, appropriate foldering levels, and assure that the filetypes are appropriate for digital preservation. For the last year or so, I have been working on prepping a very large oral history collection of audiotapes to be digitized. It will be put online when itâs ready, but before I even send it to our digitizing department, I have to make sure that all the oral histories are in numerical order, so they can be matched up with the corresponding transcript,and that I send them up with the appropriate metadata. Access (online + in person) Access to transcripts is always available in our reading room. Access to AV depends on if the item is digitized. If it is still on tape cassette or reel to reel, we need prior notice before providing access so we can digitize it. Reference + Instruction We provide reference services any time we are open, as well as by phone and email. We try and provide instruction as needed or requested by professors, but weâre currently very short staffed and we canât always provide more than a one shot instruction session, which is not ideal for our students. Personal copies (free for family members) We can provide personal copies of just about anything, and those copies, whether audio, video, or transcripts, are free to direct family members. Funding One of the things that is unique about our relationship with the American West Center is that we provide some funding for the oral histories that go into our collection.
- Jessica
- We have the transcripts of four oral history projects digitized and available online, another is partially online due to the permissions we were able to obtain from the interviewees and ethical concerns Started with the most heavily used projects Three more projects have been digitized and are awaiting metadata, which is very time consuming because itâs Original cataloging at an item level and the metadata has to conform to Mountain West Digital Library standards Additionally, the AV digitization is very time consuming. As we mentioned, it is done at real-time, so it takes many hours for a single interview to be digitized. Also has to be compressed before itâs available online, and This means it will be a longer until we are able to provide that service. g When we have the digital objects and the metadata is applied, we link the files directly to the finding aid.
- Right now, we donât have any audio or video collections of oral histories online. Those have taken more time, partly because of the length of the digitizing process. But when we finish digitizing the audio, those AV files will be also linked to the finding aid and to the transcripts. Putting the audio and video online is a little different than the transcripts because the transcripts have been edited by the interviewee. However, in the AV Archives, we donât have time to edit the audio or video files in accordance with all the edits the interviewee has made. After a consultation with our copyright librarian about the legality of putting the unedited AV files online, we were referred to Campus Legal Counsel. Campus Legal Counsel advised us to put up a pop up use agreement on the audio and video files. Whenever someone accesses one of these files, they have to click on this use agreement you see on the slide to continue. This basically just states that the user will only use these oral histories for personal or research purposes. A big part of this is because our previous waivers in which interviewees deeded their interviews to the library only referred to edited transcripts, so with the audio and video files, we had to make sure we were basically recreating the reading room environment online in our digital library. We have fixed this in our most recent waiver.
- One of the ways we have been able to move forward in providing access to our legacy oral history collections is really by building clear communication between the AV Archives, Manuscripts, the American West Center, Campus Legal Counsel, and also different departments within the library. This communication is most effective when personal relationships are established and you know someone beyond just an email address. As humans, I think we feel more responsible to people we know personally and it helps to have collegial relationships with each other. Establishing the parameters of these partnerships has been helpful to me , for instance, to know what services the metadata team can provide and what I will need to do myself, and the same for the American West Center. What can I reasonably expect them to do before they deposit an interview with us and what do I need to do to hold up the libraryâs end of the bargain? Although the libraryâs relationship with the American West Center is informal, we can still define the parameters we work under and document those as necessary. Having regular contact with the campus legal team also means that we really have a liaison to go to when copyright or ownership is unclear. Itâs been great for us to work with someone who is developing a niche knowledge of oral history law. Part of this communication is really to let other folks know how our workflows function in the library, especially between Special Collections and Digital Operations, who does our document and a lot of our AV digitizing, our Digital Preservation team, as well as Metadata and Cataloging. Application programming is the team within the library that created the pop up on our streaming audio as well, so weâve been collaborating with them. Part of how this helps us is really on the front end too. The American West Center can give us a heads up when it has video files, we can make space on our servers to be able to put large high quality files into them.
- Another part of the way that we are still working through that started with our legacy oral history collections but really applies to many other collections is just establishing policies and procedures. We are working on a formalized training manual for interviewers and transcriptionists so they know what the library needs from them and why. Some of these policies we are working on will address how we establish a queue for digitization, and preservation policies in terms of filetypes and sizes of files, filenaming protocols. An imperative part of collaborations like ours includes a regularly scheduled review of waivers. This next slide is an image of a waiver that was recently reviewed and edited by the legal team and one of the changes that they made clear on this review was that the audio and video files would not be edited.
- Jessica
- Shared spaces are really important, and we are moving forward on being able to be more linked in the digital world. The Multimedia Archives was recently allowed to give the American West Center read only Access to our server space so that they can have access to all the digital audio files. The situation isnât ideal because they can access the rest of our collections as well. The way the servers are set up, we had to give them access to all of the collections or none of them, so we just work on a trust basis that they wonât be accessing or using any other collections on the servers. We also have a new webpage in the works that lists all of our oral history collections and provides links to the finding aids. This webpage will also refer patrons from one collection to another. As Juli talked about, sometimes collections have different names. While in Multimedia, we have a collection called Ethnic Oral Histories, but in Manuscripts it has a different title. So this website provides the patron with say, a list of manuscript oral history collections and the corresponding titles of collections in the Multimedia Archives.
- Keep reviewing why we are doing what we are doing-- never settle for âthis is how it has always been doneâ Oral histories are too important to let sit unused Improve access! Communicate between divisions Ask questions! Whatâs your workflow? Where do things go? What would make your job easier? How can I make your job easier? Oral histories are too important to let sit unused; especially when they document underrepresented group! Remember the future archivist and donât make them do all of this over again -- document, document, document everything! Donât assume that your faculty, patrons, students, oral history interviewers, etc. know how all of this works; be patient and committed to educating them on processes