Thing #14 said we had to "create an audio or video file – a 3 to 5 minute introduction to yourself.". I've chosen to use a snippet of an oral history interview that I've conducted in my role here at the University, because I think it's the best introduction I can give to my job.
Firstly, because I speak very little in it and let the interviewee do the talking. This is the hardest thing about doing an oral history interview! It also shows the difference between an archivist and a historian or an archivist and a curator - we let the past speak for itself, be that through living people or through old documents.
Secondly, because it conveys some of the wonderful surprises I have in my job. In oral history interviews you never know what the interviewee is going to say. This interview had been fairly routine for half an hour and then he told me two anecdotes about Rag Week in the 1950s that I wasn't expecting and really add to our knowledge and understanding of the Polytechnic, as well as giving me a good laugh. Similarly a box of papers can look really dull and then turn up some absolute gems. In the last year I've found handwritten letters from Quintin Hogg, photographs of women fencers from the 1920s and correspondence arguing about the cost of typewriters. All of tremendous value to our researchers.
Thirdly, and lastly, because there is no point in having archives if no-one knows they're there. When our website is revamped we hope to include snippets from our oral history interviews online. The collections are already open to the public but we need to show them then riches within them. So this is a technique I hope to be using then so now seemed like a good time to practice it!
This should hopefully take you to the file on my University google docs page: podcast . It's not quite 3 minutes but it is very funny, so I hope that counts.
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