About the Project

The Precarious Oral Histories Project is led by oral historians in the Australian National University team of the Language Data Commons of Australia. We work to identify oral history collections across Australia as a necessary first step towards their long-term preservation.

Many individuals, communities and organisations have invested time, effort, skills, and care into creating rich oral history collections over the last several decades. These collections feature everyday peoples’ stories, form part of our cultural heritage, and can transform understandings of Australian history. But many collections held outside of major state and nationally funded cultural institutions are at risk of not surviving into the future because there are not the resources needed for ongoing digital preservation and long-term management of interview access conditions.

Young woman, seated, being interviewed by a female interviewed with lighting and microphone overhead. Back of man controlling camera also visible.

Filmed oral history interview, for the Centre for Multicultural Youth history project. Photographer, Persephone Waxman, CMY.

Collections on fast-deteriorating formats, like reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes, and CDs, are especially at risk. Little is known about precarious collections held outside of major cultural institutions that are at risk of being lost. This project is taking an important first step by identifying and recording details about these collections to assess the extent of at-risk oral histories.

So how do we define a precarious oral history? Very broadly! Precarious oral history collections are collections of interviews that may not have long-term support, funding, or preservation systems in place. Unlike collections held by major state or national institutions, they may be at risk of being lost, becoming inaccessible, or not being properly managed in the future. The key question is: how safe might your collection be in 10, 20, or even 50 years?

Recognising that an oral history collection may be precarious is certainly not a critique of the collection or those who created it. There are so many wonderful oral history collections that have been created with skill, care, and shoestring (or no) budgets which have recorded the stories of people whose lives may not have otherwise been captured on the historical record. Short-term funding—especially for community groups, academic projects and other organisations—can make it difficult for many oral history project creators to develop long-term preservation plans for their interviews. And much oral history training and support, when available, has often focused on creating and using interviews (rather than what happens to them long-term). 

This project hopes to prompt people, groups and organisations with oral history collections who may not view their collections as potentially being at risk to consider this possibility. Please consider that:

  • Older file formats, including open reel tapes and compact cassette tapes are quickly degrading. Several years ago, the National Film and Sound Archive released their Deadline2025 campaign and discussion paper, which highlighted how audio and audiovisual material on tape formats were at risk of not surviving.
  • We know from archivists that digitalisation—while essential—is not the same as long-term preservation. Digitalising material is a vital step but we also need to consider how quickly digital formats can come and go. If your collection is held in a digital audio format, such as mp3 files, what happens if and when these files become obsolete and are no longer supported and accessible?
  • Collections are sometimes only held in one place, such as a personal computer. We know that having digital collections saved in multiple places is essential to prevent the collection from potentially being lost if the only place it’s held, like a hard drive or computer, stops working. 
  • We know, too, that many collections are held by individual researchers or by one person within a community group or organisation. What happens to a collection if the only person who holds the collection leaves an organisation or passes away?
  • Part of managing oral history collections long-term is also about ensuring that the access conditions that interviewees selected (if they signed rights agreements or consent forms at the time of interview) can be respected and managed in the future.

These are not new questions. Many people, groups and organisations with precarious oral history collections have long been thinking and working through these challenges. Archivists and oral history collection managers have been working on responding to these challenges for decades. Most major national and state cultural institutions are already dealing with some of these challenges. We have decided to focus our time and resources on precarious oral history collections held outside of major cultural institutions (which have resources and legal responsibilities to care for their collections) so that we can focus on people, groups and organisations who often most lack the necessary ongoing support and funding to look after precarious oral history collections in the long-term.

The project team is working closely with the National Library of Australia, Oral History Australia, and community organisations.