Talking with Scholars: Developing a Research Environment for Oral History Collections

Abstract

Scholars are yet to make optimal use of Oral History collections. For the uptake of digital research tools in the daily working practice of researchers, practices and conventions commonly adhered to in the subfields of the humanities should be taken into account during development, in order to facilitate the uptake of digital research tools in the daily working practice of researchers. To this end, in the Oral History Today project a research tool for exploring Oral History collections is developed in close collaboration with scholarly researchers. This paper describes four stages of scholarly research and the first steps undertaken to incorporate requirements of these stages in a digital research environment. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.