Metadata schema for oral history content in South Africa

Abstract

Metadata schemas are becoming increasingly important, not only for storing internal data, but also for allowing content exchange, reuse, and access. Metadata are also important for the retrieval of oral history content. In the dawn of democracy in South Africa, oral histories of previously marginalised communities were collected to close the gaps in archival holdings. The National Film, Video and Sound Archives (NFVSA) was charged with the responsibility of keeping the collected content in its custody. The NFVSA was mandated to make oral history content available and accessible through metadata creation. However, the creation of metadata for oral history content presents some challenges that affect its accessibility. This study explored the metadata schema for oral history content stored in the NFVSA, with the goal of proposing a framework to ensure access and retrievability of oral history content. Qualitative data were collected through document analysis, inventories of oral history output at the NFVSA, and interviews with purposively selected archivists at the NFVSA charged with the curation of audio-visual archives. Data was thematically analysed. The findings suggest that oral history content collected over years since the dawn of democracy in South Africa is inaccessible because it is uncatalogued or not classified. As a result, the outputs collected and converted to audio-visual formats were stored in boxes. This content may become irretrievable in future due to technological obsoleteness or it has not been arranged and described. It was concluded that failure to transform this pattern would result in the loss of collected oral content that was supposed to be used for the transformation of the archive holding. It is recommended that the NFVSA should create metadata to ensure that oral history content can be retrieved and accessed. This study proposes a metadata schema and an access framework for oral history content in South Africa. The framework may be applicable to other repositories in the country and on the continent. A further study on the selection of oral history content to be captured is suggested, as the current collection still reflects the current elite members of society, thereby perpetuating elitism in critical emancipatory.