vendredi 26 octobre 2012

Preparation for creation of oral archives



Firstly, we wonder who is in charge of  creating and collecting these archives. Some people think that archivists haven't got  enough time to do it and they haven't been trained to create oral archives. Indeeed,  creating oral archives sparks off specialised knowledge. Archivist has to manage these records when he receives it. Historians can conduct an interview because he has knowledge to contextualize the investigations, he  has got specialized knowledge about his field of investigation.
However, in other countries, the archivist has to participate to oral investigations. Indeed,  he has to  know textual sources  to conduct an investigation. As he creates these archives himself, archivist  could  describe it, collect and select it  in the best conditions.  Some countries defend this point of view like Singapore,  Canada, Malaya. Nevertheless, archivists have to formate to conduct an  oral investigation. New training courses have opened to specialize some archivists to do it. For example, a course was created in EBAD to Dakar.
Creating oral archives takes a lot of time for an archivist. Firstly, he has to find documents about subjects of investigations. He has to get informed about the historical context of investigation, the job of the interviewed person. He has to master his subject and persuade the person to confess to him.
There exist several kinds of interviews.The first interview consists in holding out a mike and let people talk freely. However, this kind of interview is risky because the person can move avay from initial subject.It is a free interview.
Another inteview consists in ask too long questions and the witness answers briefly and recordings are unusable for history research because it doesn't bring new information about the subject.
So, archivist has to prepare a grill of questions which enables to obtain the most precious answers of witness.
An interview can last one hour to several hours of recordings.
Archivist has to master technics of recordings. In the 1960's, archivists or historians used tape recorder. Then, Compact disc was invented in the 1980's. Now, they use digital technologies. It is possible to obtain the text of interviews today with sophisiticated appliances.
When archivist finished an interview, he has to give an identification on these recordings (material support or electronic file). Then, he has to describe it, he has to write a biographical note about the witness. He has to transcribe again the text of investigation (eight hours for one hour of recording). These steps  lead to classifying these archives and write finding aids which enable the exploration of  these archives by users.

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