Oral History: Stories at the Museum Around Artworks The Challenges of Sharing Interview Recordings in a FAIR Way

This contribution outlines how successive research projects have contributed to the national digital research infrastructure supporting Open Science and FAIR use of oral history focused on artworks and their care. These projects have enabled a research collaboration of the University of Amsterdam with DANS-KNAW, the Foundation for Open Speech Technology, the National Institute for Sound & Vision (NISV), SURF, the University of Twente and many Dutch art museums. In addition to the interviews with artists and conservators that have been made available over the past years, the OH-SMArt Deposit Application for Oral History at DANS-KNAW is in use. Moreover, a collaborative virtual research environment to prepare the material with automatic speech recognition and correction software is planned to be integrated in SURF Research Cloud, linking SURF Research Drive and DANS-KNAW repository services for FAIR use for a more efficient workflow. Finally, the OH-SMArt Reflexivity Tool is being developed for CLARIAH’s Media Suite, hosted by NISV, to record users’ interpretations of the source materials revealing different perspectives, with the aim to improve research quality when using archived oral history data for research and conservation decision making, for example. Overall, the projects succeeded in building a fruitful network for the advancement of FAIR digital archiving in humanities research. Not only has a sound deposit pipeline been established to significantly facilitate archiving and publishing of oral history data, but more fundamental issues have also been identified in the collaboration between different disciplinary cultures that require further attention. These include different conceptions of FAIR data management when dealing with audiovisual interview materials about art and museum practice, and wider access to the national research infrastructure by museums and cultural heritage institutions, calling for continued research.