Subheading: a meeting with Lucy Porten
Bad news first? Or good news first? Lets end on a positive…
The Spanner
So… The National Trust is not an archive. Every recording is stored at the British Library and you have to pay to get it out; a small fee but still. A fabulous perk of having it stored at the British Library is that the library is a power house and has the money and facilities to keep everything updated and playable. They also have great paperwork, which can be interpreted in multiple ways. The National Trust also does not use this archive. The National Trust podcasters have only recently discovered the existence of the archive, which is a bit awkward. Also it is unknown whether the British Library wants to store any edited recordings.
This does not mean that I am not allowed to keep copies of the recordings at the hall, but the British Library have pretty strict rules around keeping second copies. They are definitely a bigger stakeholder then I initial imagine, but I think we can still think of something.
Added note (27/04/21) Tried to find the National Trust archive on the British Library website and failed. Even asked the help chat and they could not help me.
The Chat
I mentioned that I was interested in doing an oral project around this oral history project, Lucy reacted by saying that she also was interested in doing an oral history project of oral history at the National Trust. The National Trust seems to be in a similar spot as the UN and the WTO where they have no idea how they got where they are now.
The Gang
Now this is the really fun bit because Lucy’s and my thinking do align, and my CDA is starting at a time of change within the National Trust and an increasing interest in oral history. Lucy therefore wants to set up an informal gang of like minded people and I have an invite. Hopefully this will result in a super helpful network of people who want to reform how oral history is conducted at the National Trust with an extra focus on reuse. Yay! I have also offered my services as someone who can deliver all sorts of fun innovation workshops.