Archiving Oral Histories of the Present: Description and Processing

Organizations, initiative groups, and individual researchers have been collecting oral testimonies since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This work often has two main aims: preserving memory and achieving justice. To reach these goals, institutions and people must process collected materials responsibly and ethically.

The seminar, attended by researchers who record and archive conversations about the experiences of the Russian war against Ukraine, was intended to discuss the first steps after the interview is recorded: the issues of description and further digital processing of the materials. During the meeting, we discussed standards for preserving and organizing files, peculiarities of transcribing audio and video recordings, and approaches to creating metadata. The conversation also touched on the integrity and authenticity of the digital sources, security features of various platforms and tools, access and processing of data, including with the help of AI. Such a joint discussion is essential in developing best practices in archiving digital documents from interviews with witnesses of the war events.

Seminar participants:

• Angela Belyak (FernUniversität Hagen)
• Alina Doboszewska (Dobra Volia Foundation)
• Maria Gryshchenko (Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
• Tetyana Kovtunovych, Tetyana Pryvalko (Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance)
• Oksana Kuzmenko (Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
• Pavlo Lenyo (Uzhhorod National University)
• Svitlana Makhovska (Chernihiv Research Center for the Anthropology of War)
• Svitlana Osipchuk (War Childhood Museum)
• Nadiya Pastukh (Independent researcher)
• Iryna Pyatnytskova (V. Stus Donetsk National University)
• Natalia Khanenko-Friesen (University of Alberta, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies)
• Artem Kharchenko (I. P. Kotlyarevsky Kharkiv National University of Arts)
• Machteld Venken, Inna Ganschow, Vladyslav Siulgin (Luxembourg Center for Contemporary and Digital History, C²DH)
• Anna Wylegała, Olena Kondratiuk, Olha Krasko, Alyona Tron (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
• Natalia Otrishchenko, Valentyna Shevchenko (Center for Urban History)

The seminar is a part of two international networks: "Documenting Russia's War on Ukraine" (LivArch) and "Researching the Collecting, Preserving, Analyzing, and Disclosing of Ukrainian War Testimonies" (UCORE).

UCORE aims to create a digital environment for a transnational database of war testimonies and contribute to a diverse culture of memory in Ukraine. It is being implemented in cooperation of the Center for Urban History with the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Luxembourg Center for Contemporary and Digital History.

LivArch seeks to improve methods and theories of collecting, preserving, and enriching digital sources while working towards responsible representation, publication, reuse, and long-term archiving. This is a joint initiative of the Herder Institute for East Central European Studies, Leibniz Institute for European History (IEG), Mainz, Center for Urban History, Lviv, Luxembourg Center for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, and the University of Pennsylvania. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Marburg Center for Digital Culture and Infrastructure (MCDCI), University of Marburg, and Justus Liebig University Giessen.

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