Preserving memories and voices for the historical record

An introduction to the purpose, value, and reliability of oral history – exploring memory, perspective, and the importance of recording for long-term preservation.

The ethical and legal foundations of oral history – from informed consent, privacy, and trauma awareness to copyright, intellectual property, and the responsible management of participants’ rights in the Australian context.

Effective ways to design interviews, outlining adaptable structures – from formal openings to closing questions, and practical methods for planning questions to support exploring topics in depth.

Comprehensive guidance on achieving high-quality, preservation-ready recordings – covering suitable devices, microphones, recording standards, equipment maintenance, and digital preservation practices.

How to create accurate, accessible transcripts – covering AI and professional transcription, correction and proofreading processes, narrator review, and identifying the transcript as the authorised version of the interview.

How to support the ethical use of oral histories – evaluating reliability, creating appropriate metadata and summaries, and editing recordings or transcripts in stages for different audiences.

Beth M Robertson has 45 years’ experience in the fields of oral history and audiovisual preservation. She began using oral history in 1979 for her Honours History thesis at the University of Adelaide, recording interviews with South Australian women about their experiences during the First World War. From 1987 to 1999 Beth was the foundation Oral History Officer at the State Library of South Australia (SLSA), responsible for developing the library’s oral history collection as the state’s central repository for recordings and transcripts. She conducted over 50 one-day workshops to teach people how to plan oral history projects and record interviews.

She was a member of the committee of South Australia’s Oral History Association that produced the first and second editions of the Oral History Handbook as A5 booklets in 1983 and 1985. In 1994 Beth wrote the expanded third edition to complement her training workshops and support the growing cohort of staff responsible for oral history in Australian collecting institutions. Her fourth and fifth editions were published in 2000 and 2006, during which time she became responsible for managing all SLSA’s audiovisual formats and then, as Preservation Manager, of all the library’s collections. During the four years prior to her retirement in 2023, she oversaw the implementation of SLSA’s first digital preservation system, including the ingest of over 15,000 files of the library’s digitised and born digital oral history recordings.

Beth was awarded Honorary Life Membership of Oral History Australia (OHA) in 2001 and was presented with the inaugural Hazel de Berg Award for Excellence in Oral History in 2006. She was a member of the Editorial Board of the OHA journal, 2007–2022, and was on the OHA Book Award judging panel, 2019–2022.

Beth has also been a member of the Professional Historians Association (SA) for over 35 years. Since 2014 her research interests have included the identification and biographical outlines of 1,728 men and women whose images feature in The Old Colonists Photographic Mosaics Collection held by SLSA. Most arrived or were born in the first five years of the British Province of South Australia, 1836–1840. They include her great-great-grandfather Edward Stirling who passed down a rich family oral tradition that revealed his African Jamaican descent about which he had been publicly silent. Beth wrote the nomination that led to the collection being inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register in 2023.