Spotlight: Privacy, Academic Freedom, and the Law

Keeping Stories: Archiving Oral Histories in Troubled Times

James King, M.A., Doctoral Student, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh

The recent Chronicle of Higher Education story, “Secrets From Belfast,” concludes with the lament, “The project itself is dead.  No more books, no more revelations, no further insights into the minds of former paramilitary fighters.”[i]  If no more of the Belfast Project’s oral histories will truly ever be heard, then the case represents a significant historical loss.  Perhaps, though, a greater loss might be if the case’s notoriety impedes future collaborations between archivists and oral historians in conflict and post-conflict societies. Moving forward, oral history collaborations must take to heart the lessons of the Belfast Project by first addressing legal or ethical concerns prior to initiating a project and then ensuring that all collaborating institutions and individuals are clear and steadfast about promises made to participants.

Conversations about the subpoenas’ effect on current and future oral history projects have been rich and varied. For instance, oral history experts Mary Marshall Clark and Clifford M. Kuhn took part in a recent live conversation with the Chronicle’s Beth McMurtrie about aspects of the case instructive for oral historians and archivists.[ii]  The conversation covered many critical topics including informed consent, narrator review, and the need to consult all legal and IRB resources when embarking on politically charged projects.  By both answering questions related specifically to the Belfast Project and providing a primer on oral history in general, the conversation provides an excellent resource for understanding the case’s implications for oral history.

One topic the conversation did not address was how the controversy might affect the relationship between archivists and oral historians.  Though the Belfast Project might have proven an ultimately unsuccessful partnership between the archive and oral history, it would be unwise, especially in today’s digital age, for oral historians to begin a project without archival input on such issues as access and long-term preservation. As a report on the work of Northern Ireland’s Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN) states, “the main problem with the stories being collected at the moment is that they are being recorded to differing standards, with little or no metadata collected and stored, and with no consideration of long-term preservation.”[iii]  Oral historians and archivists rely on each other’s expertise to ensure both the capture and long-term preservation of significant historical records, and a fractured relationship vastly weakens their collective mission to record and reveal history. 

As both cautionary tale and cause célèbre, the Belfast Project continues to spark a productive dialogue within the oral history community about ethical and legal issues surrounding scholarship, as well as mobilize academics, politicians and other disparate groups to protest the cooption of oral history for unintended uses.  In the wake of the Boston College subpoenas, archivists and oral historians must fully absorb its difficult lessons, apply them to their collaborative projects, and then move forward with their important work.

References: