Exploring the Importance of Provenance in Oral History Collections

This research will examine the importance of documenting provenance for archived oral history collections.

For each collection that it archives the British Library Oral History department maintains records (physical, digital or both) about the collection, which may include documentation such as funding applications, correspondence, project management documents and evaluation reports.

These records offer an insight into how the project developed and was run, though these records vary in size and there is no consistent approach to collecting this kind of material when an oral history collection is archived.

At present these records are treated within the Library as administrative records and are accessible only to Oral History department staff. The student will have privileged access to this material for their research.