Bringing history to life
Using technology to make local oral histories accessible to a wider audience
Lancaster University’s History department is the physical home of the Elizabeth Roberts Oral History archive. This resource contains transcripts of interviews of people conducted in the 1970s by Dr Roberts, focusing on the family and social lives of working-class people in Lancaster, Barrow-in-Furness and Preston between 1870 and 1970.
Although academics could request access to the physical transcripts, access to the archive index was sometimes difficult for members of the public. To solve this problem, the archive has recently been digitised by the ITPI team, hosted on Microsoft’s Azure platform.
Challenges of creating a digital archive from paper copies
A significant part of the archive is the original index created by Dr Roberts. The index contains a series of keywords that link transcripts together into specific areas of interest, such as ‘accidents’, ‘mill work’ or ‘childhood’. It was therefore vital to create a relational database, using Azure SQL Server, in such a way that the original index could be retained and extended. Throughout the project, we always took time to ensure we understood how the physical index works. A lot of drawing of database diagrams on whiteboards occurred in the early days of this project!
Another challenge was that scanned transcripts needed to be stored securely yet be available to the digital archive. Finally, it was very important that the digital archive is easy to search and retrieve documents, but also suggest to the user other areas they may be interested in.
Our solution
To reach these aims, the digital Elizabeth Roberts Working Class Oral History Archive utilises Microsoft Azure. This cloud computing platform is used for secure transcript storage and SQL Server and C# API and front-end hosting. The security and redundancy of the file storage was a substantial factor in our choice to use Azure.
The front-end was built in React, so that search components could be accessible and reusable throughout the site. Accessibility of the site was achieved by using simple UI with clearly defined sections.
A digital version of Dr Robert’s the original index list is completely visible on the website and the search API also returns suggestions for other keywords. In this way, visitors to the site are prompted to explore the index further.
The website allows the archive to be used in a way that was not possible prior to this project and enables those interested in local history to explore and deepen their interests.
