Oral history research at University College Cork: Past, present, and future

摘要

This is a report on a research project which set out to explore the feasibility of creating a sound archive in University College Cork. It identified the number and types of oral history projects that existed in 2016 in the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences (CACSSS) in UCC and it established the state of readiness of those available for digitisation and preservation in a discoverable form. It sought to use the strategic research fund awarded to preserve two existing online oral history collections to create a valuable and trusted long-term online searchable secondary research resource. It was successful in preparing one of these for deposit with the Digital Repository or Ireland (the DRI); the HEA funded Irish Women at Work Oral History Project. The digital content for this project is now available via the Digital Repository of Ireland. This report documents the process involved in identifying and selecting a suitable common platform / portal and the standardised metadata required to keep current holdings safe online and to make them accessible and searchable to scholars and civil society groups. It also presents the results of a survey conducted with CACSSS staff and postgraduate students, which indicates that there is significant interest in the university community in safely preserving and making accessible data collected in the course of research projects and in accessing data when it is made available by other researchers, particularly online. As evident in this report, until such time as a UCC or alternative institutional sound archive is established in Ireland, the DRI provides a national trusted repository for oral history and related data collected by UCC researchers and students.