Built on sound principles

Abstract

The Oral History and Folklore Collection at the National Library of Australia is a research archive; a substantial collection of unpublished audio recordings of varying length and levels of documentation created by and for researchers. These recordings are often extensive and difficult to navigate; even so they are a much appreciated resource for a wide variety of users, from family historians to professional writers. Following a long running preservation program, the majority of the collection has been digitized to archival standards and user copies made which preserve access to the primary document itself, that is, the voice. To allow users to discover and have access to the primary source sound recording, and to be able to locate specific content within those recordings, the National Library of Australia has developed a time-linked search and delivery system and a schema to enable it to be searched by its innovative aggregation platform, Trove ( http://trove.nla.gov.au ). The Library’s Audio Management and Delivery System currently makes nearly 7,000 hours or 13 percent of the Oral History and Folklore collection publicly available, and content continues to be added. This paper describes the development of that system and considers the nature of innovation within a library environment.