The National Oral History Association of New Zealand (NOHANZ) held their biennial conference in Wellington last weekend and I was fortunate to attend. The conference drew professional and amateur oral historians working in the most amazing range of areas from interviewing train drivers in Picton to former gang girls to Quakers to well known artists.
The theme was “Using Oral History in Communities” and apart from the stimulating opportunity to learn and network (for people who do a lot of listening they sure can talk!) some fascinating speakers provided great inspiration. I’ve posted about some of the highlights on the Library Blog.

I also attended a “technical day” run by the National Oral History Centre at the National Library. I think this may have been the first time the centre has really addressed the issues of digitisation as certainly 2 years ago they were still training people on analogue equipment. So there is a whole community of oral historians coming to grips with the digital age. Some are moving much faster than others but the intention of the day was “Making the best possible digital audio recordings”. Sound conservators and technicians talked about guidelines and standards, gave a technical introduction to digital audio, talked about making a good recording, choosing equipment, file management, making CDs, digital preservation and what is required for depositing recordings and related material in the Turnbull (and other archives).

The use being made of oral histories encompassed the academic and of course Maori, particularly with treaty claims, but also as a basis for books, for exhibitions and for artworks. Some people were recording their community voices or were planning to. Rather depressingly one library had brought equipment without a clear idea of how they would use it with the community. Maori are making extensive use of oral history in treaty claims research and capturing iwi traditions and they are exploring all sorts of exciting things such as recording on video, very active and outdoors recordings – i.e an interview may be conducted while walking around a marae or sitting on a beach of special significance.

Putting community voices onto the internet is a great way of sharing that digitisation makes possible and at Christchurch City Libraries we have a good example with Ti Kouka Whenua, but we also have the Library Detective and various interviews from the Auckland Writers Festival and other events. In the government sphere the resources have been poured into Te Papa for their Passports and Community Gallery but not many of the interviews recorded for those exhibitions  seem to appear on the website – they have just a few podcasts. On the other hand the VietnamWar.govt.nz site which is part of the official reconciliation with Vietnam vets is a lively example of interviews, photos, video etc which have been (and still are being solicited from the community) – it is a sort of Vietnam Kete.

I think community storytelling will benefit greatly from the advances in the digital age and give voice to people who are seldom heard, but whose so called ordinary lives are filled with the extraordinary.

First Design Workshop Warm-Up by CCL Staff, on Flickr

Facilitated by Aurelia Arona and Paula Rigby (Christchurch City Council Maori Art Advisor) the session was a great opportunity for team representatives to learn about tukutuku and to start thinking about ideas for the design of their panel.

The panels will be contemporary, combining traditional patterns with more contemporary designs and materials to symbolise aspects specific to our library’s history, our community, our natural surroundings, our role in the wider library team. By using non traditional materials we will be free from observing much of the tikanga surrounding traditional materials.

Each team will be provided with a 1200 x 600 pegboard panel on which rows of half round dowel are glued and painted black. We can use “scoubidous” – colourful plastic cords, to weave the base patterns and to lash objects to the panel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoubidou) Objects such as buttons, beads and other treasures to embellish the designs. Once the panel is at the halfway stage it’s time to get out customers involved – they can help with the weaving or contribute objects, ideas etc. The idea is to work together and have some creative fun while celebrating your team and library.

There are many ways teams can contribute – weaving, design ideas, donating materials, recording the process with words and /or photographs, writing the explanation of what the design symbolises and promoting the community weaving sessions to customers. At the first training day teams were working together sharing ideas and this can continue by using the message board that had been created.  http://staffforums.ccc.govt.nz/ccc/forums/728/ShowThread.aspx#728

Upon completion, the panels will be displayed on the website and our customers can vote on their favourite one. The ‘Peoples Choice’ prize is a team morning tea.

There will be two Library Liaison sessions in April which will cover similar information. Paula and Aurelia have prepared an excellent print overview: Te Puna Mahara

This afternoon we were lucky enough to get a talk and tour around the Hocken library.  Our tour guide was Anna Blackman who is responsible for Archives and Manuscripts.  The collection is sooo cool.  If you think ANZC’s got some treasures (and it does) Hocken blows it out of the water.  With 8500 linear metres of archives of mostly Otago-related material you’d better believe there are some gems in there.  I wanted to fossick but that sort of thing is frowned on, I’m sure.

As well as having a nosey in the stacks/archives we had a look at the pictorial collection, and were shown the gallery, currently hosting a Ralph Hotere exhibition.  Hotere was a Frances Hodgkins  fellow at the University of Otago forty years ago in 1969 and it was interesting to see see the original artworks that were previously only familiar as art from the books of various writers such as Hone Tuwhare.

Anna also gave us a presentation looking at what of the Hocken is available online, particularly looking at their He Taonga Mokemoke project which involves around fifty photographic images of Māori people who are unidentified.  The idea is that by pointing these images online members of the public may be able to help in, not only identifying the tupuna pictured but thereby also allowing whanau to have some input in how the images are used/displayed.

Anna also talked about Hakena, which is the online “catalogue” of what is held by Hocken and is something that I’ve found really useful in MLIS projects and in helping ANZC customers.

Our Space is an multi-media exhibit that is live now at Te Papa. People contribute their own photos, videos and text regarding life in New Zealand and the results are added to a collection of images that users can use to create ‘tracks’ online or add to the real world elements of this exhibit. Te Papa staff say they aimed to create a collaborative space that would provide a “seriously fun” exhibit that was “all about me”. The target audience for this – 15 – 25 year olds are used to creating content, interactivity to them is not pressing a button and watching a video. Curators would play a passive role in the development of this exhibit, real people and their interests will be the basis for this exhibit, which is expected to run for ten years. Eventually Te Papa hopes to almost fully relinquish their ownership of this process as it organically evolves into a member-driven community.

Inside Te Papa, visitors can alter a huge video wall using a wii-like remote. They add, edit, recolor and mix media to create a user generated wall. It’s hard to explain – go here . Every minute a pic is taken of the wall to archive it’s progress. Within Te Papa there are stations where visitors can record footage of themselves to add to the wall.

Also within Te Papa is a satellite floor map of New Zealand composed of touch sensitive screens. This also features digital content contributed by users and the Gibson Group, who is working in partnership with Te Papa. As users walk across the floor, images relating to the area they are walking on, are generated on “The Wall.”

“The Sky” is another display area for this content, both on-line and in screen form at the Museum. 6 LCD screens display the 200 most recent uploads to the site and ceiling cameras track the interaction of the user with the image, so the image can react to the user. Te Papa being Te Papa, there are also two new ride experiences associated with this exhibit.

The content for this exhibit is a mix of user generated content, visual material from Te Papa Collections, content from TVNZ archive and other partners. There is a small amount of cataloguing  of the collection. All submissions are screened, sorted and tagged. Perhaps it wasn’t easy for the curators to be entirely passive.

When Te Papa was challenged to create an exhibit that “celebrated notable and ordinary New Zealanders”, no-one would have predicted this result. Eventually Te Papa aims to have interactive, contributing stations at various locations around NZ. Would our Library be a good fit for this?

Sadly I have nothing new to post about conference as in the dying stages of it, I did not find anything of great interest to spark another conference post.  However, we (Erica, Chris and I) did get out into the city and checked out 10 libraries.  Using our GPS (I thought Chris was sending me a text about ‘groups’ and couldn’t work out why we would have to pay for ‘groups’ in the rental car.  Then realised it was GPS and was very excited about the chance to play with some new technology.  I am now in love with GPS, although I do understand how important it is to be able to read paper maps), we traversed the volcanic mounds of Auckland on a journey of discovery and what interesting things we saw.  The libraries we visited were as varied and representative of the diverse communities within the Auckland metro area.

Auckland City Libraries – Commencing our journey in the very affluent and pretty suburb of St Heliers we were surprised by the lovely airy interior of the library that belied the old fashioned exterior.  Recently refurbished and remodelled they had managed to combine some lovely old features with modern technology and needs to great effect.  Interestingly, the children’s area was bland and uninspiring.  We discovered later in the journey that there was not a dedicated children’s person at each library and this became very evident as we went from place to place.  Next stop Epsom, Rodney Hide country.   The key features of this library were the shape (large octagon) and the very large self issue stats.  Considering the age of the population, the myth of ‘old people’ not liking technology remains just that, a myth.

Moving into a the more multi cultural suburb of Mt Roskill we discovered a lovely library in a not so great building.  AP uses the same colour palate for all libraries with the same furniture so we were picking up on the theme by this stage.  What this library had though was a great children’s area and a library with huge ethnic diversity.  Another theme we were picking up on related to floating collections.  We left feeling very excited about what ‘floating’ collections can do for customers and staff.  Less handling of stock for couriers and library staff, better looking collections, refreshed daily with new titles.  Customers don’t know about floating collections but do comment on the refreshed nature of their library’s collections.  No more complaining about having read out the library on any one subject.  AP floats picture books, large print and something else I can’t remember right now.

Final stop on our AP adventure was Onehunga.  Very very different from St Heliers.  A lovey newish building with lots of light, there was nothing stunning about this library.  We had already seen all the furniture and the colours and the staff were too busy to engage with so we wandered around and smiled at people and then took our leave.  One key difference I noticed here were the children sitting in the foyer eating pies as their afternoon snack.  The whole place reminded me of New Brighton which was nice.

A question we asked ourselves at the beginning of our trip was ‘is it a good idea to ‘brand’ our library interiors with a colour palate and furniture styles?’  Answer: ‘No- not for us’.

The Oral History Workshops run by the Oral History Centre of the Alexander Turnbull Library will be held again starting in April. Taken by Judith Fyfe, who is a lawyer and vastly experienced oral historian, they are a great learning experience – I can highly recommend them. All the courses are held at the National Library in Wellington.

The courses begin on Saturday 5th April with an all day session which is Part 1 of Essentials of Oral History. Part 2 is on Saturday 17 May. Finally there are two half day sessions on Abstracting Oral History on Saturday and Sunday 14 and 15 June.

It is an expensive deal to undertake the courses once fees, travel and accommodation to Wellington is considered but one possibility is to apply for the Jack Ilot Oral History Education Operating Fund.

Michelle Bradley will be running Oral History courses at Risingholme Community Centre next year. The dates for the courses are:
Introductory Oral History – Sat and Sun 5 and 6 April (Sat 9.30-4.30, Sun 9.30-1)
or Sat and Sun 17 and 18 May (Sat 9.30-4.30, Sun 9.30-1)

Cost $45.00 plus booklet $20.00

Michelle Bradley was responsible for the Lyttelton oral history project in which she compiled a collection of 12 engaging interviews on recollections about life in the township. It was first presented publicly in Lyttelton in 2004 as “My Home is Lyttelton”.

Intermediate courses are planned for later in the year. Visit the Risingholme website if you are interested.

For those of you who haven’t yet discovered Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum and their amusing cartoon strip, Unshelved, then take a deep breath and get ready to recognise your library life in cartoon form.

Also check out the store to see what t-shirts you could purchase for the librarians in your life. My current favourites are ‘what happens in storytime stays in storytime’ and ‘frequently asked questions’.

If you want to curl up in bed and have a laugh, then you can always borrow their printed offerings from your favourite library (all five books are in the catalogue).

Enjoy ;-p

It is Banned Book Week, and Lisa has put together a marvellous display in the Centre for the Child.  It is entertaining and surprising to see what books have been banned at some time in their history somewhere in the world.  

Her voice was reminiscent of Aunt Daisy, but slower. In response to a simple question about memories of a wedding, the 82 year old Martinborough woman laid out her memory as a seven year old of being the flowergirl at the wedding of the local baker’s daughter. Her excitement at the dress and big pink ribbon in her hair and the mysterious moment during the reception when the bride jumped to her feet and dragged the bridegroom from the hall in great haste. The next day the bride gave birth to a baby boy. Two years later that boy was dead, tragically drowned in a bowl of soaking hops in his father’s bakery. This was the magic of oral history – a simple question eliciting a fascinating train of memory – birth, death, scandal all in the one tale.

This example was played at the Essentials of Oral History workshop I have just completed at the National Library. Run by experienced journalist and oral historian, Judith Fyfe, the course is very interesting and practical. Becoming a good oral historian involves understanding what you are collecting and following professional processes to make sure that your interviewee is comfortable and able to contribute the most they possibly can to the record. We were taught that we were not conducting a journalistic interview but rather collecting raw data. There is a skill in letting the interview flow, being patient with pauses, but also not losing sight of the need to ask followup questions or clarify information. All this goes to create a record which future researchers can understand and access for useful information.

I’m looking forward to completing two followup workshops in the next two months – Taping Seriously and Abstracting Oral History. These weekend workshops are held regularly by the National Library.

Find out more about the National Library Oral History Centre and the workshops here. The courses are held regularly in Wellington and sometimes around the country.

I’m interested in hearing from anyone else who is currently involved in Oral History recording or is interested in becoming involved.