Building and Enhancing Digitally-Born Oral History Collections in Digital Commons

Room A

Digital Commons offers archivists a platform for sharing digitally-born oral histories that mitigate many complex issues. Not only does the platform allow for the consolidation of files from multiple fixed storage media to a single location, but it also allows archivists to safely preserve donor information, release forms, and robust, descriptive metadata, providing researchers with immediate access and discoverability. This presentation will highlight the process of creating and enhancing digitally-born oral history collections in Digital Commons. Particular attention will be made to enhancing the collection with native streaming capabilities. While still in its beta phase, native streaming has allowed staff to present the collection in an attractive, more user-friendly way while avoiding the need for complicated third-party software.