Friends of Battye Library (Inc.)

The Oral History Digitisation Project

Through the Oral History Records Rescue Group (OHRRG), a Lotterywest Grant has been awarded to rescue and make accessible irreplaceable and deteriorating oral history audio cassette tape held in the J S Battye Library of West Australian History (Battye Library) for the immediate and long-term benefit of the entire Western Australian community.

The Issue

Experts agree that audio cassette tapes have a finite life span and that this is dependent upon the quality of the original tape and recording as well as their storage conditions. The cassette tape format is such that after a certain point the sound recording and the tape itself will start to degrade.

Cassette tape is also subject to loss through rapidly changing technologies. In 2009, it was announced that recorders and tapes would no longer being manufactured and that parts would not be available to repair playback equipment. It was estimated that within five years members of the community will no longer have the capacity/ability to listen to the voices of those interviewed on cassette tape.

This means that the transfer of these oral histories to digital format is even more urgent and every effort must be made to ensure the personal stories of these West Australians are saved and shared.

The Aims

This project will 'jump-start' the increasingly urgent preservation of the cassette tapes held in the Battye Library by transferring 7,500 hours of the most at-risk oral history interviews to digital format.

In addition to ensuring that over 50% of our highly significant oral history collection is available to current and future generations through preservation and improved access, OHRRG aims to make 200 of the voices of these Western Australians available to listen to online.

The $800,000 Lotterywest grant will fund the salaries of a Project Manager and team of specialist staff with the State Library of WA purchasing state of the art equipment, constructing high quality sound studios and providing the support services needed for the project.

OHRRG will manage the Lotterywest grant for the benefit of the entire community, and acknowledges that without Lotterywest's vital support the people of Western Australia would lose unique and priceless historical records and sound.

The OHRRG

OHRRG is a consortium of key stakeholders interested in the preservation of historical records at the Battye Library. It consists of representatives from:

	Friends of Battye Library Inc.
	Oral History Association of Australia (WA Branch) Inc.
	Professional Historians Association (WA) Inc.
	Western Australian Genealogical Society Inc.
	Royal Western Australian Historical Society Inc.
	History Council of Western Australia Inc.
	Private donors

The Project Outcomes To Date

By December 2010, Lee Blackford had been appointed to manage the OHRRG project and specialist staff such as audio technicians had been contracted.

It was also in this month that work was completed on the state of the art sound studios at the State Library, training with the digitisation equipment undertaken and project itself was finally underway.

Between December 2010 and March 2011, 789 hours (188 interviews) of oral history cassette tapes have been digitised.

Audio Technicians have spoken of some of the wonderful stories about outback life, wartime and personal hardships and offer a glimpse of a couple of interviews that have been digitised for preservation and access:

	A former Director of Mental Health Services in WA, which provides remarkable insight into the development of mental health services both at a state and national level, as well as the development of psychiatry as a discipline in Western Australia. As well as covering his distinguished career, the interview covers his entire life experience from early childhood. Anecdotes from his school years are particularly delightful, such as a surprising weakness in mathematics (particularly for a doctor), or a very clever system of avoiding being forced to play football in the rain.
	A merchant seaman who worked mostly on boats out of Fremantle, but who was actually moored in Darwin harbour during the bombing of Darwin in WWII. (This interview is also distinguished by its particularly salty language.)
	A part-aboriginal man who worked on cattle stations in the Pilbara in the 1920s. He discusses his own life experiences, the customs of his mother’s tribe, his perspectives on white and Aboriginal society, and what he sees as the problem of alcohol.

Sound studio, December 2010. OHRRG staff (from left to right)

Kim Lofts, Valda Kiely, Lee Blackford, Anna Kotooussov, Tim Gillett and Maureen Blackford.

Absent: Adrian Bowen, Librarian