Best Practices and Guidelines for Conducting Oral Histories : Library Guidelines for Accepting Oral Histories

Transferring Oral Histories

The Libraries can partner with faculty and students to support creating, sharing, and preserving oral history interviews. These guidelines are for individuals or groups interested in having their oral history collections hosted and/or preserved by the Libraries. The Libraries' Best Practices and Guidelines for Conducting Oral Histories cover best practices for conducting oral histories, including the planning, interview, and post-interview stages. The guide also provides links to helpful resources on oral histories. We encourage you to speak with us at the beginning of your project so that we can ensure that the project aligns with our collection and digital preservation policies and answer any questions about the process.
Please email libsys@binghamton.edu for questions about oral histories or complete a project request form.

The Libraries require the following to accept the transfer of oral histories:

Consent forms

Consent forms document the interviewee's willingness to participate in the project.  Consent forms permit the Libraries to publish the interviews online, transcribe them, and create copies for preservation. A consent form includes the interviewee's name, signature, date, and a clear statement of permission to archive the interview and make it available to the public in perpetuity. The Libraries' consent form may be used, or its language may be borrowed to create your own consent form. The Libraries require copies of consent forms (print or digital) to archive interviews and make them accessible.

Copies of the audio files

We recommend using an application that records or can output audio to WAV files or high-quality MP3 (256 kbps or higher). The Libraries require raw, unprocessed copies of the recordings, preferably as .wav files. The names of the .wav files should follow this format: [interviewee last name][interviewee first name]_[date of interview as YYYYMMDD]. For example, smithjane_20160413.wav

Please follow the Best Practices and Guidelines for Conducting Oral Histories advice to announce interview data at the beginning of each recording in case the file names become corrupted. The Libraries can also preserve edited short clips created from the interviews.

Project Description 

The Libraries require a narrative description of the project, including:

• Name of departments /organization
• Name(s) of project managers
• Description of project: purpose, scope
• Names of participants and basic biographical information, if available

Metadata 

Provide basic metadata (descriptive information) about each oral history. The metadata may be created and organized in a metadata template. This is an example of the type of metadata generally required for oral history projects. We encourage you to work with the Libraries to adapt this template for your project. The Libraries are also able to instruct on metadata best practices.

Transcription

A transcription of the audio recording is necessary for accessibility. Transcriptions are also important because they enable researchers to consult, reference, and browse the text more easily. The Libraries have used Otter.ai and Rev to generate transcripts. Other transcription services may be used as well.

Options for hosting oral histories: Omeka and the ORB

Omeka Platform: Omeka is the Libraries’ online content management system for online digital collections and digital exhibits. Collections added to Omeka become part of the Libraries’ digital collections. The Libraries will work with the donor to create, design, and customize a digital collection in Omeka that will provide access to the recordings and transcripts. Oral history collections added to Omeka will also be linked off the Libraries' Oral Histories webpage.  The Libraries and donors will sign a project MOU.

The ORB:  The ORB is the Libraries' institutional repository. It is an open-access platform that Binghamton University faculty, students, and staff can use to share their scholarly and creative works. Oral histories added to the ORB are not considered part of the Libraries’ collections. Individuals/departments wishing to add an oral history collection to the ORB meet with the ORB administrators to decide where to best “host” the collection on the ORB (i.e. is a departmental project, a local or regional project). The individuals/departments and the Libraries will work to develop a landing page for the collection. This will generally include a description and an image. Once the collection is created, the individuals/department can use the ORB submission form to upload the metadata, audio files, and transcription. To learn more, contact the ORB site administrator at (ORB@binghamton.edu)