Access to Oral History Content in South Africa: Metadata Skills Matter

Abstract

Metadata skills are required when organizing oral history content. Often, oral history content is not organized through archival principles to ensure ease of access. This qualitative study focused on metadata skills to facilitate access to oral history content in South Africa. Qualitative data were collected using document analysis and interviews with archivists to determine the content of the education and training programs with special reference to oral history content. The collected data was analyzed using the thematic analysis method. The study reveals that, although oral history content is an integral part of archival collections, education and training of oral history content is often offered separate from archival and record programs. The study recommended the inclusion of oral history content management in the archival science curriculum. It also proposes guidelines to inform education and training of metadata and metadata standards and/or schema.

Introduction

Archival practitioners concur that metadata and description are fundamental to discoverability, including access to archival materials in a variety of ways. Therefore, the archival sector requires archivists who are highly skilled and motivated to perform metadata duties with sets of metadata competencies. This suggests that archival education and training programs should produce graduates with the requisite skills to perform right away on their first jobs. In addition, archival institutions are required to provide access to oral history content in a variety of formats. Although oral history content does not fit adequately into archival standards for description, practitioners also lack knowledge and skills to deal with the conceptual metadata required for oral history content. Metadata are essential elements in accessing information and resources. Similarly, metadata quality is crucial for discovering, selecting, and accessing information and sources. This is because if metadata quality is poor, discoverability and accessibility will be compromised. However, the ability to create quality metadata depends solely on the knowledge and skills possessed by the metadata creator (a particular metadata schema has implications for the metadata quality and level of description; therefore, education and training are crucial to creating the quality of metadata).

Developing metadata, especially structural metadata, requires a deep understanding of user interface design, tools, technology, standards, and schemas. ¹ Professional metadata experts with the ability to assign subject headers and perform subject analysis are required for more advanced metadata production; non-professionals like technicians, interns, or student workers can provide simple metadata if they supply subject headers or restricted vocabularies. Additionally, metadata education may be offered as part of archival education. One cannot overstate the importance of archival education in developing archival skills, particularly metadata skills. However, higher education institutions in sub-Saharan Africa still lack a solid foundation for archival education. Mosweu reveals that archives and record management professionals are poorly equipped to manage digital records in Botswana. ² In contrast, the study by Tsabedze and Ngoepe found out that the University of eSwatini did not offer any archival program and, as such organizations, eSwatini sent its records management staff to countries such as South Africa, Botswana and Namibia for training. Ngoepe, Jacobs and Mojapelo ³ also found a lack of digital records in the undergraduate curricula and, thus, recommended the inclusion of computational archival education to address the gap. Another study was conducted in Africa and found that education programs had a lot of work to introduce and improve course content to meet the requirements of modern curriculum; Katuu warns of the importance of archival education in ten African countries. Katuu emphasized that it is important to view archival education within its complex sociocultural nature. ⁴ However, the studies do not explicitly highlight the significance of metadata skills. This study explores metadata skills as a factor in access to oral history content in South Africa. This is so because a study by Mahlatji reveals that oral history content is stashed in boxes at the National Film and Sound Archives and not readily available as metadata is not assigned.

The South African Department of Sport, Arts and Culture ⁵ (DSAC) organized training for oral history personnel at the National Archives and Records Services of South Africa (NARSSA). ⁶ NARSSA, in collaboration with provincial archives and OHASA, ⁷ trained students in oral history methodology and how to use it to research or build a family tree. Through the recording and archiving of oral histories, the DSAC has the opportunity to record the largely untold micro-histories of South Africans. The practice of recording oral histories has two main benefits: (1) acting as a transformational mechanism to address past imbalances and functioning as a therapeutic mechanism to deal with the turbulent past of South Africa; and (2) enriching our educational curriculum at all levels by creating extensive and deep archives accessible to domestic and international scholars. ⁸

Problem Statement

Archival education and training programs should produce graduates with the requisite skills to perform right away on their first jobs. The curation of oral history reveals a knowledge and skill gap in archival practice, despite the training institutions offering it. This implies that there is a skill deficit in the archive field. Saurombe and Ngoepe ⁹ attribute this gap to a shortage of training institutions that offer tailor-made archival studies in South Africa. In practice, some of the metadata elements about oral history content are not filled with information, despite the metadata elements being applicable to oral history content records. This poses a challenge when it comes to ensuring public accessibility to oral history content. It is for this reason that researchers believe that problems and challenges of history metadata content emanate from archival education and training programs.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to explore how metadata skills impact accessibility for oral history content in South Africa, in order to assess the knowledge and skills of archivists on metadata creation.

Knowledge and Skills for Archivists

Oral history content is known to be a challenging subject for archivists. Mackay regards oral history content as the most complex and distinct from other types of archival records in terms of description, copyright, and general administration. ¹⁰ These oral history recordings are interactive, non-standard, and frequently lack important accompanying records or critical metadata, making them difficult to organize and preserve. To overcome these challenges, one needs knowledge and skills in oral history content, as well as the application of metadata creation schema and standards in metadata creation.

Metadata creation requires the necessary knowledge of metadata schemas, standards, technologies, and user interface design. ¹¹ Despite how metadata is created, to fulfill the task, the essential knowledge and skills required for a metadata practitioner include^12,13:

Knowledge of metadata standards, schemas, best practices, and applications, as well as the ability to design structural and administrative metadata, understand various digital file formats, select appropriate standards, design automatic metadata structures, use various tools, emphasise consistency, be flexible, understand user search behaviour, and understand XML, experience in using various databases and applications, understanding data migration and conversion, and knowledge of user interface design and metadata creation. ¹⁴

The expectation of archival practitioners is that they must manage and preserve born-digital materials, make analogue resources online, and incorporate social networks into their work. ¹⁵ Archival practitioners must be skilled at creating, storing, retrieving, and disposing of records using a variety of hardware and software tools. They should be aware of the various record formats, such as paper, electronic, microfilm, and optical. In addition, they must be proficient in using shredders, scanners, databases, and spreadsheets, among other tools. ¹⁶ This is because digital technology has had a significant impact in the field of archiving.

To be effective in the digital technology space, archivists must use new media and technology on a daily basis. Mosako and Ngoepe state that

In the digital age, users are deferring to the use and exploration of Web-based platforms as the new normal practice to access archives and interact with special collections remotely. It is evident that the way forward is for collections to be made available through shared spaces that are not limited to a single institution but to a global audience through services such as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, WhatsApp, and emails. ¹⁷

Furthermore, Bhebhe and Ngoepe ¹⁸ recommend for the “use of social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, to increase their accessibility to the outside world, as different social media tend to attract different people.” These authors also state that there should be adoption of the use of such social networks as marketing strategies to make users aware of the availability of oral history sources in the archives.

Increasingly archivists are training users virtually through their websites and social media.

Mukwevho and Ngoepe ¹⁹ emphasize the use of social media for public archives access. Bhebhe and Ngoepe ²⁰ also mention the importance of archival literacy for the public. They are of the view that the public does not know how to use the information found in the archives to the maximum. Educating and training users virtually is not unique to archival institutions. The study by Mosako ²¹ asserts the implementation of museum educational strategies through information communication technology to educate users through online services. Additionally, they may be requested to contribute to developing online courses that may be used in education and training at institutions of higher learning.^22,23 These factors may have a direct impact on the skills needed to train these researchers to use archive information effectively. Every profession has been impacted by the need to provide quality metadata so that users can access archival collections, including oral history collections. Learning how to use new media, cooperating and working effectively with IT staff, and ensuring that born-digital creations are preserved for access for a long period of time, all require education and training in various ways.

Education and Training for Archival Practitioners

It has become more challenging to prepare students and continuously develop archival staff in historical editing, public history, and archives. ²⁴ Archivists learnt to process, characterize, and transcribe oral history material in any format. However, as more and more archival institution services go online, the tools of their trade are becoming more diverse, challenging, and rapidly changing.^25,26 The target audience has grown to include anyone with internet access worldwide. Mosako ²⁷ emphasizes the importance of interconnectivity, claiming that Internet connectivity is a critical link between cultural institutions and society because it allows people to interact with and learn about culture and history. As more cultural heritage and memory institutions look to make their analogue material available online, preparing students to participate and thrive in a technologically complex and competitive world has become a major challenge, according to Chen and Joyce. ²⁸

These have become a challenge as education and training for archivists is limited, while other practitioners remained untrained. This was not surprising, as Maluleka, Nkwe, and Ngoepe ²⁹ established that the education program available for archivists in South Africa consisted of only a few programs offered by four out of twenty-six institutions of higher learning. Only one of the four South African universities offering archives and records management qualifications provides a full bachelor’s degree with a major in archives and records management. ³⁰ This is contrary to Zimbabwe, where higher education institutions, including universities and polytechnics, offer records and archives training programs and produce hundreds of records and archives professionals each year. ³¹ In addition to educational programs at learning institutions, there should be continuous development programs for practitioners.

Continuous development programs are intended to improve knowledge and skills for practitioners and are on-the-job training through workshops, seminars, conferences, and related programs in the field. In the archival field, there were a number of programs annually and/or as needs arose. The South African government established the Oral History Association of South Africa (OHASA) in 2003 to address the deficiencies in oral history content within archival institutions in South Africa. The mission of OHASA is to promote and facilitate oral history recording, preservation, access, and popularization of oral history in South Africa (including poetry, music, oral praise, oral performance, and oral traditions) ³² (NARSSA 2016). The OHASA is mandated to support and enable oral history research, recording, preservation, accessibility, and popularization, by hosting national annual oral history conferences in all provinces of the country. The hosting of the annual conferences provided a platform for organic intellectuals to share their knowledge with delegates and practitioners, thus enhancing their knowledge and skills in their work. Bhebhe and Ngoepe ³³ (2021) commend OHASA for its role in the coordination of oral history programs in South Africa.

On the other hand, the National Archives and Records Services of South Africa (NARSSA) offers staff training through workshops. The workshops were organized both internally by the NARSSA and/or externally by external stakeholders in the record management sector. National office staff would provide training to provincial personnel, such as the implementation of the new metadata. ³⁴ Such training is not unique to South Africa. OHA, ³⁵ an international organization, offers training on topics such as metadata creation, oral history workflow, and access to enhance and promote knowledge in metadata creation and metadata schema/standards. ³⁶

Research Methodology

The study employed a qualitative methodology to study metadata education, training, and metadata creation in South Africa. The NFVSA staff was the target population of the study. Data was collected through interviews to obtain detailed qualitative information from archival practitioners. The interviews were complemented by document analysis, in which the researcher analyzed education and training programs with special reference to metadata for oral history content. Data were thematically analyzed using thematic content analysis method. The population of the study consisted of NFV staff, and the participants were drawn from the archive/records management section, which had a staff complement of sixteen employees. These units were relevant for the study, as their key responsibilities involve managing metadata content records. However, the researchers stopped after interviewing eight (8) archivists as the level of saturation was reached. ³⁷ Data were analyzed and presented verbatim using the themes skills, knowledge, as well as metadata elements for oral history content.

Research Findings and Research Discussions

This section discusses the findings in relation to the knowledge and skills of the participants for metadata and oral history. It was important to establish the knowledge of the participants with the metadata schema used in the NFVSA. This information was critical because knowledge of the metadata schema would suggest a greater opportunity to maintain metadata quality and, more importantly, share their experiences, since this was a qualitative study that relied more on the real-world experiences of the participants and the meanings they ascribed to these situations. ³⁸ This section begins the discussion with the qualifications of the staff.

Qualifications of Archival Staff

The researcher began by identifying the participant’s qualifications. The findings show that the staff had qualifications ranging from post-matric certificates to master’s degrees at the time of data collection. For example, one of the participants stated that he had a degree in archives and had taken short courses, whereas the other stated that he had a Bachelor of Information Science degree. Another participant had recently completed a master’s degree. In addition to educational qualifications, it was critical to consider the number of years of experience in the organization. The participant’s qualifications were dominated by a bachelor’s degree in information science. This could be because Ngoepe and Saurombe ³⁹ indicated that only one of the four South African universities offering archives and records management qualifications provides a full bachelor’s degree with a major in archives and records management.

Experience of the Participants

The experience of the participants ranged from one year and six months to more than twenty-five years of service. This also contributed to determining the experience in terms of time spent interacting with oral history content, metadata schema, or both.

Participants had extensive work experience, as the majority had been employed before and after the new metadata schema was implemented. This suggests that they had sufficient experience to apply what they learnt from the previous schema to the current one. Participants learnt by interacting with and using the schema, or through training. As previously stated, the metadata schema can help improve the quality, consistency, and usability of the metadata. It can also improve collaboration and interoperability with other systems and/or platforms. ⁴⁰ The challenge remains that if metadata practitioners lack knowledge on the metadata schema and/or oral histories, this will result in poor metadata thus affecting access.

Knowledge of the Metadata Schema

Participants were asked to indicate their familiarity with the metadata schema used.

When asked about their knowledge and skills with the metadata schema in use, some participants reported that they were familiar with it because they had used it, while others had never used it but had been exposed to it. This was because, while the metadata schema was officially rolled out and implemented at NARSSA in general, it was not completely implemented at the NFVSA due to network issues. However, all participants were familiar with the metadata schema used, having either interacted with it or been introduced to it as part of NFVSA activities. In addition to using the schema, staff received training on the new metadata schema in place.

According to the Participant:

There is training on the use of the new metadata schema, but some have not created any metadata records because the system is always on and off due to network problems. Others were more familiar with the metadata schema as they had created the metadata records, although it was a slow process due to system downtimes.

The metadata schema was adopted as a national schema for South African public archival institutions, despite the challenges relating to its implementation. One of the challenges includes network issues, as stated by participants. A follow-up question was asked to gauge their experience with the new metadata schema, given that it had only been implemented for less than ten years. This allowed the NFVSA to retain the metadata record created from the old metadata schema and the new one. The participants acknowledged this: “We sometimes still use the previous metadata schema because it could be used manually. But we are in the process of migrating metadata from the old database to the new one.” The temptation to still rely on the manual metadata schema could be an indication of the skills gap required to thrive in the digital technology world. ⁴¹

Another lack of knowledge is related to awareness of the oral history content available and/or existing in NFVSA that is uncatalogued. Bhebhe and Ngoepe ⁴² emphasize that national archives ⁴³ should have accessible finding aids that relate to their oral archive collection, as some researchers may not be aware of the availability of oral sources at the national mainstream archives. Bhebe and Ngoepe ⁴⁴ recommended that national and provincial archives post these finding aids on their websites. Given that some oral history collections were never described and/or classified, they remained in boxes, leaving some staff unaware of the oral history content within those boxes. Without descriptions and/or metadata, the oral history collection remains inaccessible. This is in addition to the existing metadata gaps, which affect metadata quality and contribute to a lack of access to oral history content. Poor metadata has a negative impact on access to archival collections. ⁴⁵ The fact that it is recommended that archives should consider embracing social media in their oral history program and use of ICTs and social media thus turning into virtual and online archives repositories, ⁴⁶ necessitates even further the knowledge and skills of metadata.

Since participants were familiar with the metadata schema, it was also necessary to identify the metadata elements and fields used for the creation of metadata for oral history content. Therefore, it was relevant to ask the participants if they had identified which metadata elements were applicable to the creation of metadata for oral history content.

Metadata Elements for Oral History Content

The purpose of the question was to determine the knowledge of the participants about identifying elements applicable to the creation of metadata of oral history content, as well as elements that were not covered by the metadata schema. As previously mentioned, the participants were already familiar with the two metadata schemas, having recently implemented the new one. The researcher had hoped that the previous experience of the participants would have improved their understanding of the relevant metadata for the oral history content. Participants were asked to explain the elements that were relevant and used for the creation of metadata for oral history content in the NFVSA.

Three participants agreed that all metadata elements in the new metadata schema were applicable to oral history content metadata, while three provided a contradictory response.

The previous metadata schema used all elements to capture metadata for archival materials, including oral history content, but the newly implemented metadata schema did not. Some descriptions did not fit into the specified metadata schema. Recording the physical description of an audio record proved to be nearly impossible. Although we created some metadata records, we did not use all the elements to create metadata for oral history content.

The results of the document analysis confirmed that there were some metadata elements that were not filled with information, although the metadata elements were applicable to oral history content records. Furthermore, when asked why they rarely or never used certain elements in their metadata creation, the participants explained that they were still acquainting themselves with the system and that internet connectivity issues were causing the system to create records slowly. Despite the participants’ indication that they received training on the new metadata schema, this continued to occur. For this reason, the researcher inquired about the training participant who had attended (which will be discussed later in this section). Conversely, they expressed a lack of familiarity with the metadata elements in the updated metadata schema:

Some metadata information was missing from the previous schema, but I am unable to comment on the new one. I know it has more elements compared to the old one, but I am unsure of the elements that might be used or not since I never created metadata from the schema. This was because there were always network connectivity challenges and, more often, there would be system downtime. Furthermore, since migration to the new metadata schema, I still need more experience with it to know which elements are applicable or not. What I know is that all records that were created from the previous schema were migrated, and some of the metadata elements were still applicable with the current one.

Despite having had a minimal encounter with the metadata schema, metadata elements to be used and/or not used to create metadata for oral history could still be identified. Regarding the metadata elements used for oral history content, there was a general concern about the potential impact of network connectivity challenges on the use of the metadata schema. Internet connectivity emerged as the primary reason for not creating or using metadata less frequently. Both those with and without experience with the metadata schema agreed that training in the newly implemented metadata was required. The participants agreed that, despite some system downtime issues, the main reason for the lack of use of the new metadata schema was that they were still training archivists on it. This suggests that the training of the archivists was crucial in acquiring knowledge and skills on metadata and metadata schema.

Knowledge and Skills of Metadata Standards

The participants showed some knowledge of the metadata, and therefore training was required to familiarize the staff with the system. Ahmed ⁴⁷ agrees that a lack of knowledge of archival standards affects the classification of metadata from archival collections. Participants seemed not to have had differing ideas on what classification is and the purpose thereof. This was not surprising, as Ngoepe ⁴⁸ indicates that item classification is often misunderstood, causing oral history content to remain unclassified. It was clear from this study that the classification of oral history content was not given the highest preference.

Education and Training for Metadata and Oral History

The main objective of this article is to present the knowledge and skills that archivists have in metadata and related activities. To establish their knowledge and the need for training, participants were asked to confirm if there were metadata elements that could not be used to create metadata for oral records. The participant lamented that there had been a lot of data cleaning during the migration from the old NAAIRS ⁴⁹ to the new NAAIRS.

There had been additions to many more records that were not there in the old NAAIRS records. The metadata schema was changed because it was no longer compatible with the creation of metadata by the archival institutions. Even NARSSA had to change the metadata system to address the gaps and missing elements of the previous metadata schema. There was data from oral history content that would not be described using the current metadata schema.

From the analysis of the NAAIRS database, the researcher identified the following element and/or fields:

Archival repository/depot: archival documents are kept as entities or sources in accordance with the office that developed or received them; physical location identifiers (reference numbers, file, volume, and box number); classification system; part number (the number of the part in cases where multiple files have the same reference number); description (a brief synopsis of the archive unit is provided, primarily containing the file’s original office title); starting and ending time (the item’s final dates over a period of time); remarks (detailed information, including cross-references); and Summary (only information related to national non-public record registers). A synopsis of a collection’s contents, such as an explanation of the kind or format of the collection for audiovisual and manuscript entries.

Both the remarks and the summary elements were intended for the archivists’ notes. The findings indicated that the metadata schema used was not compatible, as participants referred to gaps and missing elements in the system. For this reason, participants were asked to explain the creation of metadata for oral history content.

Metadata Creation Process for Oral History Content

Understanding the metadata creation process was crucial in determining the participants’ need for metadata training. This was also crucial in determining the knowledge and skills required to effectively create quality metadata, given the unique nature of the oral history content. Findings from document analysis indicated the following:

• Metadata standards were embedded in the metadata schema.

• There was a guideline on the scope of each element, which included what information should be covered within the specific element.

• Data templates that related to describing metadata standards but could not be edited and/or customized were provided.

• These templates, based on descriptive standards, could add or remove fields without custom development, which was also not possible.

• The schema allowed for single- and/or multilinking descriptions to authority records and accession records in the data entry templates.

Participants shared their experiences with metadata creation, including questions about how knowledgeable they were about the metadata schema, as well as how applicable and/or not applicable the elements they would have used during the metadata creation process for oral history content. The participants confirmed the findings of the document analysis. During the metadata creation process, they found themselves unable to adjust the metadata elements to meet the requirements of the described oral history content. In general, there was a consensus that the metadata schema in use contained more elements than the one previously used. Furthermore, the complexity of creating an oral history record made the metadata schema in question less user-friendly. Ensuring the filling of all necessary metadata elements and the capture of important information took more time. Although there was a conflicting opinion that the metadata creation was being simplified with the use of the metadata schema in use, as it allowed capturing all the necessary data, especially on audio-visual records, the training was a challenge.

Training gave us the knowledge and skill to facilitate implementation. Most of the workshops were held long before the implementation of the new metadata system. Second, they were also too broad (record management) for us to focus on. Especially those that were offered from external stakeholders. They had too much to cover in a short period of time, and some training information was not relevant to our work environment. In one or three days of the workshop, the information would cover everything about the archives.

Almost all of the workshops were on record management, which could explain why they were offered primarily by external stakeholders. Although record management covers aspects of describing, arranging, classifying, and metadata, training is more than just record management. Metadata curation involves metadata enrichment, skills, and a metadata guide for oral history content. This implies that metadata should be capable of incorporating additional high-quality access points to meet the needs of users. Knowledge and skills in metadata and oral history content can help achieve this. Metadata curation requires knowledge and skill training.

Another participant stated that:

As a metadata archivist, he did not participate in the workshop specifically designed for oral history content. With the training on the metadata schema and metadata-related topics, I can still create metadata records for oral history content. I believe that if we were given the opportunity to attend the oral history work and/or the content was covered during our workshop, my knowledge would be refined, and the chances of the best metadata would be created. The challenge remains when, during the metadata creation process, there is information that might have been missed during the acquisition of oral history.

The findings indicate that there appears to be more metadata training for archival materials, rather than oral history content. This could be because “only a small percentage of oral history projects end up in publicly accessible archival repositories.” ⁵⁰ (MacKay 2016). Mackay ⁵¹ emphasizes that the relationship between oral history practitioners and the archivists should be established during the planning stage of any oral history project to enable a collection of metadata necessary for the administration and of ethical issues of oral history content.

Conclusions and Recommendations

To identify the training needs of archivists, this qualitative study focused on metadata education and training in South Africa. To ascertain the substance of the education and training programs, with particular reference to oral history content, data was gathered through document analysis and interviews with archival practitioners. The study found that the training offered covered only the metadata content and structure, separate from the oral history content. Training also did not focus on the technological skills required to achieve metadata quality. NARSSA provided training and support to individuals and organizations interested in conducting oral history interviews, in addition to collecting and preserving oral history recordings.

The study commends NARSA for its valuable staff training and development efforts. Knowledge of metadata and metadata standards is important for oral history staff to ensure alignment of collected information from oral history projects and metadata creation. On the other hand, information system managers (metadata) require knowledge of oral history to create high-quality metadata, which in turn enables effective access to oral history projects. The study recommends the collaboration of metadata specialists with oral historians for an integrated training program to improve quality metadata access. NARSA should also consider working with other stakeholders, such as OHASA.

Another important factor was that the staff holds a qualification in information science. Even though information scientists are best fit in the archival arena, institutions offering such qualifications should consider reviewing their programs and/or developing new programs for archival careers. From the programs offering archival, to consider the revision of existing metadata modules in their programs to integrate metadata for oral history content.