Oral History and Digital Humanities

Voice, Access, and Engagement

Douglas A. Boyd, M. Larson, M. Larson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137322029
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: History

Exploring the developments that have occurred in the practice of oral history since digital audio and video became viable, this book explores various groundbreaking projects in the history of digital oral history, distilling the insights of pioneers in the field and applying them to the constantly changing electronic landscape of today.

P A R T I

Orality/Aurality

C H A P T E R 1

Oral History in the Age of Digital Possibilities

William Schneider

Typical archival institutions are delivering oral history collections online using repository systems that fail to accommodate oral history’s complex, multidimensional nature.

—Doug Boyd¹

Background

Thirty years ago, digital technology for oral history was in the “Baby Waiting Room” of most oral history programs, and the Internet wasn’t even a twinkle in the eye of the pioneering parents who would make it a universal portal to information. At the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), we stumbled onto digital technology for oral history under the false assumption that it would save us money and personnel in the long run, since retrieval, access, and storage could theoretically be done automatically, without human labor. In 1987, the university was going through one of its economic cutbacks, and the Oral History Program was on the chopping block. A graduate student, Felix Vogt, initiated the research that led to an Apple Library of Tomorrow Grant, and that funding provided the necessary equipment to explore digitization. This was the undertaking that would become Project Jukebox. Our first actual developer was Dan Grahek, and his work was premiered at the 1991 meeting of the Oral History Association (OHA) in Salt Lake City. A dinosaur by today’s standards, that standalone station may have been the first time a digital presentation was given at OHA.

Now, with electronic access as the norm for oral history, we look back and ask how this new mode of access has changed the methodology. Of course, this begs two more fundamental questions: what are oral histories? And what are we doing when we “do oral history?” If we begin with these questions, we are less likely to lose track of our central concerns, which are the information and meaning that were originally shared at the time of the recording. A central thesis of this chapter is that we need to be very clear about how we preserve and present oral histories and how that may differ in meaning and intent from what was shared at the time of the recording. These considerations have always been important, but they take on more meaning with digital technology. Through these new platforms, we have made it easier for anyone, at any time, to get access to recordings, and this decreases the likelihood of any in-person dialogue between the interviewer/recorder/collection manager and future listeners. When a researcher has to actually check out an oral history, the collection manager (who, in some cases, did the recording), can provide background information. The loss of this personal contact and thus, the subsequent information transmission, is a possible downside to electronic delivery. On the upside, digital delivery has given us opportunities to add supporting material to help reestablish the setting and background of the account. Because of these possibilities, when the public finds a recording online, they potentially have a great deal of information right there, on their screens, to help them understand what was shared. To do this requires developing a sustainable platform that can deliver these materials over the long term, which could be difficult, considering the ever-changing state of digital technology.

Introduction

While there are always two (and sometimes more) participants in the initial recording of an oral history, I would argue that there are three primary players in the presentation and preservation of a digital oral history once it has been recorded—the oral historian, the collection manager, and the Information Technology (IT) specialist. These three roles may, in some programs, actually be represented by the same person, but there are specific concerns and responsibilities particular to each. I will start with the perspective of the oral historian.

Context plays a big part in the discussion that follows, so I want to provide a little background on the experiences that shape my approach to the issues addressed. Unlike most oral historians, I am trained as a cultural anthropologist, and most of my research is in the field of ethnohistory with Alaskan Native cultural groups. My early work was with life histories based on oral history interviews, a topic that led me to the research of folklorists and their understanding of voice and the challenges of retaining meaning in transcription. Working in cross-cultural contexts has provided me with opportunities to experience the variety of ways in which people use oral narrative to convey meaning to each other, and it has nurtured in me a sensitivity to the nuances that members of the same culture often take for granted, but that can easily be missed by outsiders. My awareness of this has been honed through the anthropological tradition of learning through experience and through the recognition of how easily I could make assumptions about meaning only to realize later that I misunderstood. By appreciating the ambiguity that often surrounds such work, I have gained a strong appreciation for the value of hearing accounts many times over, and in different contexts, in order to understand the meaning—and in some cases, to recognize multiple meanings, depending on context and audience.

While we may think that these considerations are more relevant in cross-cultural settings where we are “out of our element,” I think we are challenged to probe meaning in all oral narratives, whether they be familiar or foreign. Digital technology can be a helpful tool to document context, to replicate the nuances of narrator presentations, to provide a comparative record of other tellings, and to provide multi-format supporting information, all in the same searchable and retrievable package. But technology, with its opportunities and constraints, can also take over our attention, and we can get carried away with the possibilities offered and lose track of the speakers and their narratives. That is the principal reason why, when we were starting to develop Project Jukebox, it was important for us to be very clear about what we wanted to preserve and present with digital technology, while at the same time recognizing what we might be losing in the process.

Finding and Retaining Meaning in Oral History

Conventional definitions of oral history focus on two things: a recorded interview and preservation of the recording for future reference and use.² Oral histories are composed of interviews, often focusing on personal narratives, and recordings of performances featuring renditions of oral tradition. When I talk about oral history, I try to keep foremost in my mind that any recordings are a shadow of what went on in the original telling. Once a story is recorded, we have an entity that will be listened to and perhaps referenced, but I want to know what has been lost in the interim. Unlike the way the oral narrative works in our daily lives, oral histories are things that can take on a life independent of personal mediators (the original tellers, their interviewers, and other people who might have been present). The recording is not the original telling; it is an entity derived from the telling. The separation between narrative formation and delivery from the product on tape—or in an audio file—makes it imperative that we document as much of the original account as possible so that future users can get close to the intended sentiment. The bottom line for me is that the words alone are not enough to retell the story, and if our goal is to understand the original telling, we need to go beyond the recording and document as fully as possible the initial exchange. At the very least, this means chronicling the circumstances of the recording, the intent and interest of both recorder and teller, previous recountings of the information on the part of the speaker, and some historical and cultural context of the subjects discussed. These constitute the data that we bring, in varying degrees, to any in-person narrative exchange. We listen and respond based on our understanding of these factors as well as the actual words that are spoken. That is what we need to preserve. We repeatedly come back to the human interchange in the moment—the history and relationship between participants, the events of the day that might influence story, and the overall complexity of any communication.

I like to think that oral narratives and their power to convey information from the past are what separate us from other animals—the ability to teach through a storehouse of stories, told to one another, often from generation to generation. This is the basis of our knowledge, and was our only archive for much of our history as a species. We take it for granted in much of our lives, but we are very dependent on this form of communication for survival, and central to the process is the actual experience of hearing and telling stories. For some societies, orally communicated knowledge is the primary and most trusted source of knowledge, even when groups face contact with literate cultures or obtain full literacy themselves.³

Appreciation for the nuances of oral narrative (the factors surrounding the words) can remind us how oral tradition and personal narrative function, and what we may be missing when we focus only on the words preserved in a recording or on a page, as opposed to concentrating on the meaning created when we experience the oral narrative being told, considering why it was told, and to whom. For all of us (those oriented toward an oral tradition and those of us raised in print-centric societies), it is easy to lose our bearings in a world where literacy and recording devices enable us to replicate the spoken word in print and in sound files. When we rely exclusively on audio recordings and text, we can find ourselves distanced from the communication process, as well as from the relationships between those who were present and the setting of where the story was told. Despite the obvious advantages of literacy and recorders, they can blind us to intended meaning—the type of thing that we learn from long-term experience in a place, with a speaker, and with the issue discussed. It isn’t a matter of what the recorder captures; that isn’t the problem. The problem is what it doesn’t capture but what we need to know in order to adequately understand what was said. As we look to the potential of technology to preserve and present meaning, I think we have to continually ask ourselves what we are not capturing in the way of meaning.

Years ago, anthropologist Richard Nelson drew an analogy between oral history and photography.⁴ A camera captures part of a scene. In the hands of an expert, it can capture a lot; but it never captures all of what is going on. In a similar way, oral history recordings capture the words and the intonation, the emphasis, the silences, and the tone. In the case of interviews, they can also capture the development of a line of questioning and response, maybe even a sense of the rapport between participants, but there is important information that may go undocumented, such as what went on before and after the recording, the relationships between the people present, and their responses. At best, we have a snippet.

To illustrate this point I like to use an example from my experiences at the University of the North in South Africa. The year was 1997 and the occasion was commencement. The speaker was Nelson Mandela, University Chancellor, and former President of South Africa. President Mandela chose to talk about his years working for the resistance fighting apartheid, but within his message was a plea for the students to follow reason and not blind allegiance. Behind the surface narrative, deep in the personal story, was a message to the students in the audience who had been through a tumultuous year in which they had not often followed reason. Slight differences with the administration led to protests and demonstrations, some of which led to shutdowns of the campus. It felt like the students were still fighting the revolution. Mandela never pointed the finger directly at them but rather used his own life choices to tell the students to use reason and make wise choices. I do not know whether other chroniclers will record this event the way I have. Being there, knowing the background of the university, gave me a window into part of the meaning of what he was saying. Of course, there was a lot that I didn’t comprehend—symbolism surrounding farm animals and the role of political parties, for example. I realize the recording I have of the speech is but a starting point to understanding what was said, but it was a powerful testimony to the importance of background and experience in understanding a story.⁵

In a way, captured audio is like a child separated from the rest of the family. It needs support in the form of explanation, background, and context. To accomplish this, recordings need to be placed with other tellings—those already gathered and those personally experienced—in order to reveal a fuller sense of what they mean. Stories need to find their place, and once that happens, they await retelling.⁶ Of course, each person comes to the recording with their own questions, experiences, and background. They will reintroduce the story when memory and occasion call for a retelling, and the very occasion they choose will reshape the ...