Patron: President of Austria, Dr. Heinz Fischer

KCTOS: Knowledge, Creativity and
Transformations of Societies

Vienna, 6 to 9 December 2007

<<< Oral history, Documentary Photography, the Archive and Social Change

 

Lives in the Oil Industry Oral History Project

Hugo Manson (University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute and University of Wellington) [BIO]

Email: h.manson@abdn.ac.uk

 


 

ABSTRACT:

The paper discusses the creation of one of the world’s biggest archives of its kind, the University of Aberdeen/British Library Lives in the Oil Industry Oral History Project between 2000–2006. Some 700 hours of life-history archival interviews were recorded with nearly 200 individuals. It discuss the centrality of the oral archive as a resource of primary evidence for historians; its role in making material available to the historian/researcher; issues of availability and ownership of the material as it moves from the original provider through the hands of the oral historian/archivist to the future user; and some of the ethical questions that arise during this process. It comments on the unique value of the oral archive, in a world in which visual culture dominates, as a source of unedited voiced material, contextualised in the life-histories of the people recorded in such a way as to provide future users with the strongest possible sense of the key questions to be addressed in any critique of what they said or did: who were these actors in this stage of their country’s history and what was the range of values and experiences that determined the course of their lives and work? Finally, it address the question of the role of the interviewer in creating this record.

 


Patron: President of Austria, Dr. Heinz Fischer

KCTOS: Knowledge, Creativity and
Transformations of Societies

Vienna, 6 to 9 December 2007