Exploring oral history collections at the Alexander Turnbull Library

Speakers

Joan McCracken, Valerie Love, Paul Diamond, Tina Cross

Introduction

Joan McCracken: Kia ora and welcome. Warm Pacific greeting to you. This is Connecting to Collections online from the Alexander Turnbull Library. Ko Joan McCracken aho.

I'm with the Alexander Turnbull Library's outreach services team and I'm delighted you've joined us today, to learn more about the library's oral history collections, with my colleague, Valerie Love.

To open our talk today, we have, as our whakatauakī, a verse from the National Library's waiata, Kōkiri, kōkiri, kōkiri, na Waikato-Tainui colleague, Bella Tarawhiti.

Haere mai e te iwi
Kia piri tāua
Kia kite atu ai
Ngā kupu whakairi e

Before Valerie starts her presentation, I have a little housekeeping. As you'll have seen when you joined the webinar, it is being recorded. And as this is a webinar, your videos and microphones are turned off. However, if you'd like to share where you're joining us from or have any general questions or comments, then please add them to chat. If you have any questions for Val, then please add those to Q&A. You'll find both buttons at the bottom of your Zoom screen.

My colleague Linette and I will be monitoring chat and Q&A. And at the end of the presentation, we'll pass on any questions we receive to Val. We'll also be adding some links to chat during Val's talk. If you want to save those links, rather than writing them down, you can click on the ellipsis, the three dots beside the chat button and select 'save chat'.

And now it's my great pleasure to introduce my colleague, Valerie Love, Senior Digital Archivist at the Alexander Turnbull Library, and also one of the curators of the oral history and sound collection. Welcome, Val.

Valerie Love: Kia ora, Joan. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction and whakataukī.

Tēnā koutou katoa
No Pennsylvania America ahau
E noho ana ahau ki Te Whānganui-a-Tara
Hei kaipupuri pūranga matihiko matua ahau
Mahi ana ahau ki te Whare Pukapuka o Alexander Turnbull
Ko Valerie Love toku ingoa
No reira, tēnā koutou
Tēnā koutou
Tēnā koutou katoa

So, hello everyone and welcome! As Joan said, my name is Valerie Love, and I am the Senior Digital Archivist and also one of the Curators for the Oral History collections at the Alexander Turnbull Library, working along with longtime Curator, Linda Evans.

In my role at the Library, I care for incoming born-digital collections, which are materials created and received digitally.

Today I’m going to be talking about some of the oral history collections at the Turnbull Library, and offer guidance on searching for oral history materials on the Library’s website and catalogues.

But first, a bit of background about the Oral History collections at the Library.

Oral history collections at the Turnbull Library

The Oral History and Sound collection at the Alexander Turnbull Library is a national collection, developed to sustain in-depth research in Aotearoa New Zealand and Pacific studies, and to preserve documentary heritage and taonga.

The term, ‘Oral history’ can refer to a range of recorded interviews, from in-depth life histories, to shorter topic-based research interviews. The collections are primarily audio recordings, but there are video oral history recordings as well.

Currently the Library holds over 20,000 recordings of oral histories and other events. The collection includes materials donated to the Library, as well as commissioned projects.

While the Library holds personal papers of many of New Zealand’s writers, artists, and cultural luminaries who are household names, the oral history collections include many more voices, including those whose lives may not be documented in traditional archival collections.

The oral history collections record aspects of people’s lives often overlooked in other forms of recordkeeping, and are a real treasure both for academic research, but also for family history and connecting to one’s whakapapa. The oral history collections contain interviews with well-known individuals and politicians, but include many more stories and experiences of everyday people and communities.

Additionally, the oral history collections provide valuable insight into language and forms of expression, and the ways in which they have changed over time.

One of the things that I absolutely love about the oral history collections at ATL is just the wide range of topics. Here you can see some of the most common subject headings on the oral history collection records.

The Turnbull Library holds oral history collections about everything from the history of ice cream making in New Zealand, to the conservation of hoiho — the yellow-eyed penguin, to interviews with members of the Māori Women’s Welfare League; stories of music and dance across Pacific Islands, the history of nursing, and so, so much more.

The Library also holds diary style interviews, which are sets of ongoing interviews conducted with the same people over a number of years.

Additionally, the Library holds many – though not all – oral history projects which have received grant funding from Manatū Taonga, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. This fund has been supporting the creation of oral history projects in Aotearoa, New Zealand since 1990. A full list of those projects is available on the Ministry’s website.

Analogue vs born-digital collections

The majority of oral history collections at the Library have been recorded on a physical media carrier, such as a cassette tape, CD, or quarter inch reel. But audiovisual materials like these are increasingly at risk due to the fragility of magnetic tape formats, and the obsolescence of playback equipment. The year 2025, which is just around the corner, is widely regarded as the date where it will become significantly harder to digitise these audiovisual formats, due to lack of both equipment and skilled staff.

The National Library, together with Archives New Zealand and Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision, are all working together to digitise Aotearoa’s audiovisual heritage. It is one of the largest digitisation projects ever seen in New Zealand, and will digitise and preserve our analogue sound and video recordings so they can continue to be listened to and viewed into the future.

By contrast, most of the Library’s oral history collections created after 2005 are born-digital. Born-digital materials are items that were originally created as digital files, and which never had a physical original. These too require special care and preservation to ensure that they continue to be accessible into the future, particularly as software, file formats, and technology continues to evolve.

All of the Library’s digital collections are persevered for posterity in the National Digital Heritage Archive, or NDHA, which is shared by both the National Library and Archives New Zealand.

The NDHA provides secure storage and access to digital collections in perpetuity. As of February this year, the NDHA contains 43 million files, spanning 244 different file formats, and consisting of 510 terabytes of data.

Structure of oral history collections

So there’s a wide range of topics in the Library’s oral history collections, but there’s also a lot of variation in oral history formats, and how the collections have been arranged and described over the years.

But a typical oral history collection structure looks like this. There is a top level collection description about the project as a whole. And in this example, it's the National Dance Archive oral history project, and that information is highlighted in green.

And then, there are additional records describing the individual interviews in the project, so you can see exactly who has been interviewed, and those are in blue on the slide.

And in addition to that, there are also item records for the materials that the interview contains, so that they can be requested as individual items in the reading rooms. In this case, the interview with Jean Chapman from 1986 consists of three audio cassette tapes and a printed abstract.

Now generally, the greatest level of detail about the interview itself will be in either the collection or interview level records. And so the item records — for the cassette tapes, for example — tend to be very scant.

Now when we think of oral history, it’s generally spoken word and kōrero that first comes to mind. But an oral history includes both the sound recordings, as well as abstracts for the interview, which are a time-coded overview of the content discussed in the interview, and these serve as guides to the recordings. Abstracts often include key names, places, and topics, and can be a printed document, a digital file, or both.

On the screen you can see the descriptive record on the left for the printed abstract from an interview with Frank Graveson from the New Zealand Antarctica Society oral history project. And a page from the abstract itself is shown on the right.

And there’s a smaller number of interviews in the collection that include full transcripts, rather than the overview abstract documents.

Finding oral history materials

So how do we go about searching and actually finding the Library’s oral history collections?

Most people begin their search on the National Library’s website, by entering a keyword, or a name, or project title into the main search bar.

But be aware that the National Library main search bar searches across all of the Library’s collections, and this includes published books, digitised newspapers on Papers Past, references in Index New Zealand, as well as the Turnbull Library’s unpublished archival collections.

And so when we search oral history in that main search bar, we've come up with over 64,000 results for oral history. The first item in the results set is an oral history interview, but the second one is actually an oral history event listing from the Library’s website, and not a collection item at all.

So it helps to be specific. You can limit your search just to the Turnbull Library’s collections, shown here highlighted in blue in the Sources dropdown menu.

So here I’ve searched just the Turnbull collections for the ‘vanishing ice oral history project’, and only records from that specific collection have come up in the results. Now, if we click on the record listing, we can see the full details about the collection.

So this collection consists of a set of four interviews conducted between 2013 and 2014 on New Zealand glaciology. Now it’s a bit hard to read on the slide, but down in the format section it states that collection comprises digital sound recordings, electronic documents, digital photographs, and that it also has printed abstracts as well.

So if you are starting your search on the main National Library website, I do want to point out the very important, ‘See original record’ button that's here.

And this takes you to the Library’s catalogue for unpublished collections, Tiaki, which is where you can actually request Turnbull Library materials to view in the reading rooms.

So it can actually be easiest to start your search from the Tiaki catalogue itself, or you can navigate to it from that main library website.

On the left hand side of the tiaki catalogue, there are a variety of search fields you can use to build your search for collection items.

If you search for “oral history” in the title field, there are nearly 600 results. These are collection level records about a specific project or topic. You can also search for “Interview with” in the title field, to bring up individual interview materials, particularly if you’re searching for recordings with a specific person.

So here we are looking at a record for one of the cassette tapes of an interview with Katy Austin, from 1999. It’s part of the New Zealand Registered Association of Occupational Therapy oral history project. But I want to draw your attention down to the Access and Use information on this record.

There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes, and so it is not uncommon to come across an oral history record with the access statement of: ‘Partly restricted – additional processing required’

This will be the case for any analogue audiovisual material that hasn’t yet been digitised, or for materials that are currently being described by our arrangement and description team.

But, where a collection has already been digitised, the record will look like this.

So this is an interview with Chhay San from the Cambodian women in New Zealand oral history project, recorded in 1993. And like the interview with Katy Austin, it was originally also recorded on a cassette tape.

But that orangey-yellow button at the top of the record is what we want to see. It means that this interview has already been digitised for preservation, and we just need to click on the button to access it. Except, there is a catch.

Levels of access

Just because it’s digital, doesn’t mean it’s online.

The Turnbull Library holds tens of thousands of open access digital collections, including photographs, manuscripts, maps, works of art, and much more that you can view online from anywhere in the world. But the oral history collections tend not to be open access in the same way.

There are currently three main levels of access for digital collections at the Turnbull Library.

The first one is open access online, meaning that the digital files can be viewed via the Library’s website from anywhere in the world. However, the vast majority of born-digital and digitised oral history collections are only available within the Library’s secure reading room.

And finally, some digital material requires prior written permission for access. So that can only be listened to once specific permission has been granted to a researcher.

The Library follows the ethical guidelines established by NOHANZ, the National Oral History Association of New Zealand. And anyone who has taken an Introduction to Oral History course with our Oral History specialist Lynette Shum, will know that ethics of recording is a big component of that training.

NOHANZ offers an ethical code of practice which guards against possible social injury to interviewees. Interviews are treated as confidential conversations, with the understanding that the contents will only be available by written agreement.

So access requirements for oral history materials are set out individually for each interview, based upon the access and use conditions stated in the agreement form signed by the interviewee and interviewer. And often times, interviews do require permission from the interviewee for access or use, and sometimes from the donor as well.

So this means that not every interview has immediate access. And anyone wanting to quote from or publish an interview needs to obtain additional permissions before doing so.

And here we have an example of the NOHANZ agreement form template, which is often used in contemporary oral history collections. It specifically states where the interview will be held for archival purposes, whether it requires permission for access, and whether it requires permissions for publication.

The Turnbull Library abides by the conditions specified in the agreement forms. And it can take time to work through the permissions process, and for a researcher to get approvals from the rightsholder to access or use oral history materials. So it can be really useful to start your research early, particularly if you have a set deadline.

So here we have an example of a born-digital interview with Dorothy Richards conducted in 2013 for the Manapouri Hydro scheme oral history project. And you can see it from big red button at the top of the record, which means that the digital content is restricted and requires permission for access. In the record itself, it states that permission to access any of the interviews in the collection currently requires prior written permission of the donor, who is the interviewer for the collection. And in any publication of the recordings or accompanying material requires prior written permission of both the donor and the interviewee.

However, this particular restriction on this collection is only for a set period of time, and then after that, the collection will be available to researchers to listen to in the reading rooms without having to request permission to access it ahead of time.

And this is the case for a lot of our collections. Many of them will be restricted for a set period of years, and then as time goes on and the interview materials become less contemporary, the access can become a bit more open.

But the good news is that there are some materials that you can listen to online today.

The Te Upoko o Te Ika - Māori radio collection contains a number of open access oral history and sound recordings of radio programming mostly broadcast between 1983 and 1994.

The collection contains kaumātua, kuia and other prominent people talking about politics, national affairs, Māori language and culture, women’s issues and Te Tiriti matters.

And this record is for an interview with Mihipeka Edwards, originally recorded on a 7 inch reel tape back in 1990. But it has since been digitised for preservation.

And as you can see, there’s a big green button at the top of the record. And so you can listen to the digitised content of this item from the comfort of your own home.

And — oh my goodness, sorry I've skipped ahead a little bit here.

Now, I mentioned earlier that there are different conditions in place for accessing collections verses use or publication of collection materials. So while this recording is open access, I can’t actually play it for you today, as part of this presentation, because it requires permission from the donor for public use.

Tina Cross interview snippet

But, we are in luck because I can play you a section of another oral history recording that was commissioned by the Alexander Turnbull Library, of an interview with legendary singer, Tina Cross, who sang the winning entry in the 1979 Pacific Song Contest. Now, this interview was conducted by Paul Diamond, our Curator Māori, on 17 October 2019 for the 40th anniversary of her song, ‘Nothing but Dreams’.

Now, the track does begin rather softly, so you may need to adjust the volume on your computer to be able to hear it clearly. But I'm just going to play a little snippet for us today.

Audio snippet starts

Paul Diamond: Track identification. This is an interivew with Tina Cross for [INAUDIBLE] on the 17th of October, 2019 at the National Library in Wellington. Interview is being recorded on a Sound Devices 722 recorder and [INAUDIBLE] lapel mics. The interviewer is Paul Diamond, and this is track T cross V O 7.

Tina, I'm really interested in this — when did your music go from being a hobby to a career? Have you ever thought of what was the — was there a moment, was there an event, time, that shifted?

Tina Cross: I think the shift started when Lew happened into my life. And that was — I'd left school at the end of seventh form, so I was almost eighteen. And I, at that stage, had secured a contract with Television New Zealand, which was originally a year-long contract to do a show call Top of the World.

It was axed after six months. But anyway, Lew turned up at the Hardgrave Street Studio, which is where we used to do all of our rehearsals.

Paul Diamond: Did you know him before then?

Tina Cross: I knew he was. And I was also aware that he was Mark William's and Rob Guest's manager.

Paul Diamond: So they were already established.

Tina Cross: They were already established, yeah. And Lew turned up and said, 'Oh, I wouldn't mind a word with you.' And after the rehearsal, we sat down and just had a chat — at the studio — and he said "I'm really interested in managing you. What do you think?"

And I went home to mum and dad and said "Oh, Lew Pryme's approached me." And yeah. The management pretty much began from that conversation. And I never signed a contract. Didn't need a contract. He was running Fuller's Entertainment at the time.

Paul Diamond: What was he like? What were your first impressions of him?

Tina Cross: Lew was a lot of fun. He was um—

Paul Diamond: Did he still have the blonde hair then?

Tina Cross: He had the blonde hair, yeah. Short. Still short. I was pretty impressed with him because he just kind of had this very cool — in those days, anyhow, when I think about it — cool look, cool hairstyle. He had a proven track record. He had been a performer himself. I kind of went "Wow". How much better does it get in terms of having somebody look after decisions that I didn't know at the time were gonna come along.

So, I was doing these show. I remember, I used to get paid 80 bucks a show. Which was —

Paul Diamond: To put that in perspective, how much that was then, it's quite a lot.

Tina Cross: I suppose it was. And I think it was per episode, or it could have been series. But I think it was per episode. So, if there was a series of say, eight or ten episodes, I would do four or five out of them, because I was alternating with another female singer.

So yeah. I suppose at the end of all that, whatever I make, you know. Three hundred and — what's four times eight? Three hundred and twenty dollars.

Paul Diamond: How did they pay you?

Tina Cross: I think by cheque. So, I had a bank account. And I'd get a cheque and I'd bank that money into the account. And I remember thinking at the time "Mum and Dad spent 16 hundred dollars on this [INAUDIBLE] and 11 hundred I need to pay it back."

I can't tell you if I ever did. I somehow think I didn't. I think I just drove the car and went and did my job. And when Lew came along, things changed a bit. I started getting live work.

Snippet ends

Valerie Love: So, that’s just a small excerpt of the interview, but it does give you a bit of the flavour. And I can imagine that in a few more years, people might listen to that and wonder, you know, 'what on earth is this cheque that she's talking about?'

So I think it's just sort of a lovely example of some of the things that change in the course of, you know, over time.

Oh, sorry! So, apologies for slight issues with the slides.

But anyway, we know that it’s not always possible to come to Wellington and the reading rooms to be onsite to access collection items. And the Library is currently working on developing a virtual reading room to provide secure, remote access to restricted collection items. But in the meantime discuss your needs with our librarians who will work with you to explore all available options for access.

Tips for exploring collections

I do really invite you to explore the Library’s rich oral history collections, and just want to offer a few parting tips to keep in mind when searching the Tiaki catalogue.

So collections have been arranged and described in different ways over the years. Some of the early collections have really detailed scope and contents notes, where as others are quite brief. And there may be several layers of records within a collection.

So, some collections are also still in progress and partially described on the catalogue or are waiting to be described.

And so, it's also really helpful to scroll down in a collection record and look for any item records that are described as part of the interview. And I will show you what that looks like in just a moment.

So, here we are back at the Tiaki catalogue. And we're looking at a collection of a record for the Transgender Lives oral history collection, which has recently been described and made available to researchers. So, here you can see that the collection contains 7 interviews, one of which requires permission for access.

But this is only part of the record. If you scroll down, you can then see the rest of the collection record.

So, at the bottom it has information about the scope and contents in the colletion, which for this particular collection is relatively brief, but there's a bit more information at the interview-level records down here.

You can also see that there's indexing terms, such as names, subject headings, and genres. And then at the very bottom of the screen, there are the child records for the collection, which include records for individual interviews and project information forms.

So to actually access the collection, to listen to it, you need to click on the child records, and that will take you to the interview records, where the digital files are attached. And although this particular collection is fully born-digital, some interview records do have further child records for printed abstracts, or for additional sets of files, so it’s always a good idea to check for additional child records.

Now, there is a lot of information about the Library’s oral history collections available on the Library’s website and Tiaki catalogue, but if you can’t find something, or have questions about oral history materials, just ask!

The easiest way to get in touch is via Ask a Librarian, which you can find in the top right corner of the Library’s website.

Caring for Aotearoa’s cultural heritage involves staff from teams across the Library all working together to preserve collection items and provide ongoing access to researchers and the general public. Many thanks to all of the colleagues who make this work possible, to the donors who entrust their collections to us, and to all of you at home for joining us today, to hear about some of the oral collections that we hold.

Ngā mihi nui, and thank you very much.

And now, I’ll be happy to take questions.

Question 1: Restriction lift dates

Joan McCracken: We do have a question, Val. so let me just pass it on to you. From Sue Burman in Auckland. "Would there be a consideration for a field in the record for those collections that are restricted but have a date when that restriction is due to be lifted to indicate that to the researcher?"

Valerie Love: So at the moment, that information is not part of the catalog record that's published online. But we do have information in our collections database where we record that information and those dates. So that information is viewable by staff in the catalog. It just isn't on the public facing catalog records.

Joan McCracken: And Sue is asking if we might consider doing that. Is that something that we could put on our list of things to do?

Valerie Love: Yeah, I mean, we can certainly have a conversation about it and see what makes sense. Our collections — we're always working to make sure that our catalogs are understandable and that we're providing the information that researchers need. So if there is a need for greater transparency, we can certainly work towards making that happen at some point.

Joan McCracken: And also from Sue, do you have an automated system that alerts you to when your collections change status, restricted to open by date? She mentions that she has a spreadsheet.

Valerie Love: Yeah, so —

Joan McCracken: Lynette would also like to comment on that, I think, but go ahead, Val.

Valerie Love: Yeah, so we don't have an automated system. What we do have is actually a couple of different ways of tracking that. So some of our collections have what's known as a release date, which is when materials become unrestricted, whereas other collections have a review date, which is where the library goes back to the donor and has a conversation about whether or not the restrictions should continue.

So there's sort of two different things in play here with collections. So we often do end up going back and having conversations just to make sure that it is okay for materials to become less restricted. So there's nothing automated about it, unfortunately. It is very much a manual process, and it is something that does involve a lot of conversation and a lot of behind the scenes work.

Joan McCracken: And Lynette's pointing out that she didn't actually want to answer that live, so that's good. That's a lovely answer. Thank you, Val.

Question 2: Most satisfying aspect of the job

And from a watcher in Hataitai — who knows that you haven't been in this role particularly long, Val — "What has been the most satisfying aspect of the curatorial job so far?"

Valerie Love: Yeah, so I've only been in this particular role since the end of January, and the most satisfying thing about it so far is really just getting to spend some quality time with the oral history collections. So in my Senior Digital Archivist role, I was working with digital collections across format areas. So manuscripts and music and photographs and oral histories and ephemera, pretty much everything.

And being able to focus just specifically on born-digital oral history collections has felt like a real treat because those collections are so rich and so varied. And so many topics that I just didn't really know anything about before actually getting to spend some time with those collections. So, for me, that's really the most satisfying thing. There's just lots of different topics that people have explored through oral history that you just wouldn't really — you might not think about otherwise.

Question 3: Most challening aspect of the job

Joan McCracken: Fantastic. Thank you. And our audience member would also like to know what's the most challenging aspect for you?

Valerie Love: That's a great question. The most challenging aspect of the collection has really been, I think, just also getting to know the collections and getting to know the — sort of the ways in which oral history collections are different than other areas. They often do have — there can be some quite complex permissions in place. So that has been a challenge. Just making sure that we are providing the best access that we can, but also really honoring those — really honoring the permissions that are required.

So, yeah, it's been really, really enjoyable so far. And the collections are really what makes it so wonderful.

Question 4: Do you link interviews to projects

Joan McCracken: Thank you. Ruth asked an interesting question. "Do you link interviews to projects or published works that have used those interviews, such as films, books, websites, podcasts, etc."

Valerie Love: Yeah, that's a really good question. We do this if we've been provided with that information. So if somebody has let us know that, we can add a note to the catalog record saying that. But it really does require somebody providing that information to us.

Question 5: Importance of abstracts

Joan McCracken: And Dan asks, "How important do you feel creating abstracts are?"

Valerie Love: Yeah, so abstracts to me are an absolutely integral part of an oral history recording because they provide the context, they provide information about where to find certain information and what's been discussed in the interview.

So if you're a researcher, an abstract is really essential in terms of figuring out if an interview is going to have the information that you are looking for on a particular subject, or if the interview mentions a person or a topic or a place that you're interested in.

And sort of the same thing goes with transcripts as well. Like they do provide a really helpful guide to the recordings themselves. It's interesting because in recent times there has been sort of more of a move towards transcripts as providing a bit more — they can make interviews more accessible for people who are hearing impaired by being able to actually read word for word what's being said in an interview. Whereas an abstract might give you a bit more of just like a general overview without that word for word. Yeah, without providing the word for word.

So there's certainly pluses and minuses to both of them, but yes, absolutely. So if we're being offered an oral history collection. We are looking for, does it contain abstract or transcripts? Because that really is a super important way into that material to support the recordings themselves.

Joan McCracken: Thank you. We should say that the library does run abstracting workshops, so if people are interested, do get in touch. We'll put the email address for that query into the chat.

Question 6: Interest in accessing the oral history collection

And Emma Jean asks "Kia ora. Great presentation. Is there a lot of interest in accessing the oral history collection? "

Valerie Love: Yeah, absolutely. The oral history collection is a collection where there is so much interest in it, both because it provides wonderful information in terms of what life has been like in different time periods or in different locations, but also that family history element of it, where sometimes people just want to be able to hear a recording of their grandmother's voice or learn more about their own family history.

And there's lots of stories that don't necessarily get told to us that you might find that, oh, somebody in your family has mentioned what it was like growing up on the farm back in the day, but, you know, never really had a conversation with you about that. So there's both the really strong research value in the interviews and there's also the really personal value in them as well, where it does help you connect to family and friends and other times.

Question 7: Examples of sources of oral histories

Joan McCracken: Thank you. From Tom. "Could you give some examples of sources of oral histories? How do they come to the Turnbull?"

Valerie Love: Yeah, that's a really great question. So there are a lot of oral histories that are conducted as discrete projects, and these come into being in a number of ways. And there's also a whole bunch of professional oral historians on this call. So if anybody else would like to sort of talk about this as well, please feel free to jump in.

But basically, sometimes an organization will have an anniversary coming up, and so they'll want to commission a history of their organization to be able to reflect back on 50 years of their work.

And so they might commission an oral historian to interview staff or former staff or volunteers to sort of come up with a sense of the history of a particular organization.

Other times, oral histories will come into being out of research projects. So there's a lot of academic projects where people have been working on, you know, a master's thesis or a PhD Thesis, and so they're researching a particular topic or place, and so they'll conduct our histories as part of that. And sometimes those get donated to the library as well as becoming part of a dissertation.

There are also, as I mentioned in the presentation, there are the oral history funded projects from [INAUDIBLE] where people can apply for funding to conduct oral history projects, and sometimes those projects are donated to us as well to archive those materials.

And then other times, the library has commissioned projects where if there's a significant event or a particular — I don't know. For example, there was a project that the library commissioned after the Christchurch Earthquakes, because that was a big, significant event, and we knew that it needed to be documented. And so the library conducted some oral histories about that. And there's lots of other topics as well.

So that's some of the ways that oral histories has come into being. Yeah, I mean, it really depends. And I think that's one of the great things about oral history is that it is something that has a lot of value and a lot of meaning and both the sort of historic big picture stuff, but then also the right now, you know, creating connections, conducting research, understanding where people are coming from.

Question 8: Earliest oral histories

Joan McCracken: Thank you. I think this is probably an unfair question, Val, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Do you know the earliest oral histories that we've got in the collections?

Valerie Love: That is a really, really good question. Most of the oral history recordings that we have are from the 1970s onward. In terms of topics, the topics certainly span from the 19th century onward. I don't know when the earliest recorded oral history item in the collection is from. That's a really interesting question. I'll have to look that up.

Joan McCracken: I thought it was an interesting question, too, but I don't know the answer either.

Question 9: Ephemera

And just a comment from Barbara saying, thank you for mentioning ephemera, Val.

Valerie Love: Oh, I love ephemera. I've always been a big fan of ephemera. Because, like oral history, ephemera sort of tells you the stories that don't necessarily get recorded in other ways. Ephemera tends to be the little sort of things that aren't necessarily meant to last. And sometimes stories can be quite ephemeral as well.

Closing

Joan McCracken: Indeed. So if there are no further questions, I will finish off for today. Thank you so much, Val, for such an interesting and useful presentation. It's been fantastic. And it's been wonderful to have those questions from you all in the audience.

If you do have further questions, please go and use the Ask a Librarian button that Bell mentioned earlier that's on the National Library website. Every page you'll find that button. So you can just ask questions of our curators or our research librarians and they will get back to you. And thank you also to my colleagues who have supported today's presentation. And thank you to all of you who have joined us today.

If you'd like to hear about future events being held at the library on site or online and you're not already on our What's On mailing list, please do sign up. You can subscribe on the events page on the National Library website. We'll add the address to chat. And remember, you can save the chat and the links we've added by clicking on the ellipses by the chat button. We look forward to the next time you can join us.

We'll finish now with a whakataukī.

Mā te kimi ka kite
Mā te kite ka mōhio
Mā te mōhio ka mārama

Ka kite ano.

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