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  • 1.  Oral History Interviews

    Posted 03-17-2023 15:21

    Hi All,

     

    I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions on the best way to house oral history interviews digitally? We have a (relatively) small collection of interviews done in the 90s through to present day, with the older originals being beta and VHS and the more recent ones born digital. Some of the VHS/beta interviews have been converted into a digital format (though the files are quite large). We have a CMS for the Museum's collection, but I'm unsure whether it is the best place to also house the digitals for the testimony. Our CMS doesn't really lend itself to accessing audio/video files easily, and also some of the files are quite large, im wondering if they need their own system or software to live on (and if there are suggestions as to the best route to go here).

     

    Thanks!

    Christie

     



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  • 2.  RE: Oral History Interviews

    Posted 03-19-2023 08:25
    All storage media is corruptible, analog and digital, so multiple copies reduce the risk that the recordings will be lost to corruption.
    The technology for playing back recordings changes with time, so migrate some copies of the recordings to current technology, both hardware and encoding (type of digital format).
    Multiple storage locations, including online services, reduce the risk of lost due to a local disaster, such as fire, flood, transient electromagnetic disturbance, civil unrest, war, etc.

    "Data storage lifespans: How long will media really last?” is a short article for various digital media.
    https://www.arcserve.com/blog/data-storage-lifespans-how-long-will-media-really-last

    Yep, this is one more thing that needs to be added to your routine schedule.

    Sincerely,
    Clif

    Clifton Patrick
    Town of Chester Historian
    119 Brookside Ave.
    Chester, County of Orange
    New York 10918

    direct phone/fax 845-469-7645
    chester-ny.gov/town-departments/historian/




  • 3.  RE: Oral History Interviews

    Posted 03-21-2023 16:06

    Hi Christie,

    Definitely want to get those on a managed back up schedule. I would contact your IT team (if you have one) and they might be able to set you up a secure network drive or central storage that they can help with the technology back up and migration needs. At its core, digital preservation is secure back ups that are on a regular technology monitoring and migration plan. It can be as big as a product- like a Digital Asset Management or Media Asset Management System or it can be backed up top tier amateur storage with a cloud backup backup (dropbox). There are alot of tools out there depending on your scale and budgets. And the EMG group is a good resource too.

    And there are entire fields out there on digital preservation and audiovisual archiving that may help you out in terms of file formats, access and migration, metadata, file fixity, etc. etc. Mostly, yes you are correct, CMS's aren't built to hold master assets or even AV, especially at such large sizes so you have to piece together a few tools or processes to meet your needs. 

    cheers, 

    Crystal



    ------------------------------
    Crystal Sanchez
    Video and Digital Preservation Specialist
    Smithsonian Digital Asset Management System
    Washington DC
    (407) 312-5195
    ------------------------------



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