V. Cataloging interviews

1. Review descriptive standards and best practices for cataloging oral history interviews
2. Determine major areas of description and access points for your oral history interviews
3. Choose a metadata format, create your cataloging template and local best practices
4. Difficulties in cataloging oral history interviews
5. A sample of oral history cataloging using Dublin Core
6. Examples of cataloging from oral history projects on the Web

It is helpful to review existing descriptive metadata standards for cataloging oral history interviews before you start to catalog.  By reviewing standards and best practices, you can learn to identify special characteristics of oral history interviews and get familiar with areas of description.

Below are some oral history cataloging manuals that you might find helpful.

Matters, Marion. Oral History Cataloging Manual, Society of American Archivists: Chicago, 1995

Minnesota Historical Society, Cataloging Manual, section 20, Oral Histories. http://www.mnhs.org/library/processingmanual/library/20.html

Ball State University, Useful guidelines for oral history transcription and Dublin Core metadata. http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/wiki/index.php?title=Oral_Histories#Metadata

To catalog individual interviews, you might want to use the following major areas of description:

• Names of interviewee(s)
• Names of interviewer(s)
• Title of interview
• Date of interview
• Physical description of recording(s) and transcript(s)
• Series statement for the project if applicable
• Notes: biographical note for the interviewee(s); interview/oral history project details; summary of interview; restrictions on access, use and reproduction if applicable; other general notes
• Any unique identifiers

The following access points can be established:

• Names of interviewee(s) and interviewer(s)
• Subject heading(s) for interviewee(s), important people and organizations discussed
• Subject headings for topics discussed
• Geographical headings for places discussed 
• Form/genre headings

You have to determine what metadata format to use for cataloging oral history interviews. The choice is likely to be based on available staff resources and budget for cataloging. If you have skilled MARC catalogers available to work on the project, you can have full-level MARC records created. On the other hand, if you only have paraprofessionals, you might want to consider using simple Dublin Core. Sometimes the choice might be limited by the system or application you've chosen for cataloging or hosting the metadata record.

An oral history project usually consists of a series of interviews about a topic, theme, place, organization, event, etc.  Creating a cataloging template with default information specific to the project will dramatically increase the efficiency of your cataloging work.

Since audio recordings and transcripts are used as sources of information for cataloging, the quality of recording and the accuracy of transcription affect the quality of the catalog record greatly. Normally if a transcript is available that will be used for cataloging, but bad transcription may provide inaccurate information for the catalog record.

• Florida Voices, Interview with Robert Watson, Nov. 29, 2006
• Kent State Shootings Oral Histories, Richard Karl Watkins Oral History
• Iowa Digital Library, Maria Mercedes "Mercy" Aguilera oral history interview, Sept. 22, 2005
• Black Oral History, Bertie Neoma Thompson, June 8, 1973
• NYL Louis Armstrong Jazz Oral History Project, Oral history interview with Doc Cheatham, 1 PApril 1993