IASA 2018 Annual Conference

The Österreichische Mediathek is Austria's archive for the collection of Austria's audiovisual cultural heritage. Among the more than 2 million recordings we currently take care of, oral history interviews are playing an increasingly important role. Within the last 15 years, we built one of the largest oral history collections in Austria, containing interviews from different sources on various analogue and digital carriers.

Apart from the different thematic priorities that range from testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust to reflections of every day experiences of migrants at the beginning of the 21st century, the ways in which we are able to provide access to these documents can vary strongly. In addition to legal issues, in recent years there have been increasingly ethical questions regarding the online publication of this sensitive content.

How can we respond to an increasing awareness of privacy concerns? What are the main obstacles for permanent online access? What happens to interview collections after the end of project funding? Building on our problems, challenges and experiences from different collection projects and the participation in aggregation projects such as Europeana Sounds, I would like to address some of the challenges related to the long-term online availability of our oral history collections.