Hi
We have our most recent interviews on CDs for production in the reading
room as MP3 files. We have the full WAV files on a server - this way
there is backup and the interviews will be included in any migration.
The problem with hard drives - as with tapes, cds, mini discs, reel to
reel et al - is out of sight out of mind. So many of our interviews are
stuck in the vaults.
I am of a similar opinion to David Lee that a central digital repository
is the way forward. We can still have access through our local and
specialist collections via our websites. The BL may even find that they
have more traffic because of this!
There is precendence for this. We at TWL have a "Women's Issues"
Collection of websites held by the British Library as part of their
larger collection. There are many benefits to this method of working.
BL has the technical capacity resources and ability to push this
forward. TWL has the specialist subject knowledge and the 'address
book' that makes the difference to the development of the collection.
In another collaborative project with ourselves the BL and the
University of Sussex, the British Library Sound Archive is collecting
and cataloguing interviews of the women's liberation movement.
Initially TWL was asked as a partner to take copies of the interviews.
But for this I would have to meet storage / migration issues, as well as
find cataloguing resources..... at a time when we know the BL will be
streaming some /all of this material in the not too distant future.
(The fact the BL is 20 minutes away from us is also a factor). Instead
we are a partner in terms of our specialist subject knowledge, our
address book, and the need from oral historians to have somewhere to
place the physical items that so often come out of the woodwork whilst
interviews are taking place. We will point to the resource from our
website. So the project has a physical collecting aspect for us.
Many of the more high profile oral history projects rely on copies of
the interviews being placed in different repositories as part of
dissemination and there are issues then about who takes responsibility
for the physical well being of the 'master' copy.
Elsewhere in the education sector we have seen a centralised repository
for academic journals - with the loss of local physical copies of
journals placed by subscriptions to centralised e-journals.
There are issues around centralised repositories but realistically I
cannot see all of us having the resources (and by this I include
technical expertise) to maintain individual digital repositories. How we
can actually make collaborations work and move forward in this direction
is another matter.
I'm looking forward to more of this discussion at the Digital
Preservation Workshop next week!
Teresa
________________________________________________________________
Teresa Doherty
Collections Manager
The Women's Library
London Metropolitan University
Old Castle Street
London E1 7NT
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www.thewomenslibrary.ac.uk
t +44 (0)20 7320 3513 (direct)
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For our online catalogues see www.thewomenslibrary.ac.uk/catalogue and
www.thewomenslibrary.ac.uk/archivemuseumcatalogue
For Genesis, a resource for women's history maintained by The Women's
Library, see www.genesis.ac.uk
For the Women's Web Archiving Collection at the British Library see
www.webarchive.org.uk/women
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