Why do people start a collection without having archiving arrangements in hand? At the idealistic amateur level it is easy for organisations with an archive to think that they can take charge of an oral history collection, but we are still in an era when many part time or volunteer archivists do not have the knowledge or equipment to do this. In the case of our archive we thought we had the archiving sorted - but it turned out we didn't. It took quite a while for this to emerge in full. We always understood the permissions and went through this with our interviewees, Our document however warns the interviewee that the archive is not managed by a professional and although we will try to comply with any restrictions, there can be no guarantee.
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Susan,
For a couple of reasons. Primarily due to the potential that the digitisation undertaken didn't pick up as much from the original recording as possible, while we endeavour to ensure that professional audio preservation is undertaken at the point of digitisation, there are sometimes problems in the digitisation process.
We haven't found degradation to be all that problematic. We have recently digitised audio casettes from the mid 1960s, not long after they were introduced for commercial use, and we have found no substantial problems in terms of degradation. That said it is certainly a matter of storage and the frequency with which audio casettes were played.
On another note, the physical object can also provide additional scope for exhibition - for example we hold a collection of mixtapes, many of which have been turned into art objects by the artist/DJ that created them.
Nick - just curious as to why you maintain the orginal format if it degrades and at some point there won't be the technology to play it? I know cassettes I have from 1983 started degrading (to the point where some of the content just dropped out) about 8 years ago so I digitised them before I lost all of the content.
I agree. The changes in recording technology are also an issue. The museum I worked at had all their oral histories on cassette tapes so these should ideally now be transferred to CDs. Aware of same issue with old videocassettes.
CDs aren’t the best form of storage anymore ether. Probably better to digitise them and store them in a hard drive in wav or mp3 format.
It is probably ideal to store in both WAV (uncompressed) and mp3 (compressed) file formats, with the mp3 principally being the access format - ALGA maintains copies in on two dfferent external hard drives, as well as maintaining a CD copy for access, along with also maintaining the original recording (casette, reel to reel).
I agree with the reasons given - another would be the that oral history interview form part of a larger collection. For example a an historian's papers might include interviews as well as other types of research papers. We have ended up with a substantial collection of interviews in one form or another in this way.
Looking on the positive side, taking the interviews as least preserves them longer than if they were not collected, and in the meantime the institution may be able to develop the capability to properly manage oral history, or alternatively find a better home for the material.
Of course a good collection development policy that defines what is collected, what is not collected and how to dispose of what is not is a wonderful tool for all archival institutions.
The other reason I've often come across is where oral history interviews are created specific purpose, such as a reserach paper - often the only agreement signed, if at all, is for the use for the particular research paper, longer term use or archival management is a secondary consideration.
I think that there is a fear of losing the record (ie oral history) altogether if the don't take it, even if the institution doesnt have the ability to properly manage it. As you say, ignornance is bliss - the intention is good but the reality is that unless there is a proper management regime its likely that all those oral history 'collections' will effectively, in time, be lost anyway.