Oral history recordings

Oral history testimonies and trancript from veterans of the Second World War, discussing their experiences. Includes a number of members of York Normandy Veterans.

The files include MPEG 1/2 Audio Layer 3 files (interviews with format identified by DROID), MPEG-4 audio files (interviews without format identified by DROID) and a Microsoft Word document (transcripts).

The date range for these records (2016 - 2020) spans from the earliest creation date to the last-modified date. The last-modified dates were inadvertently altered by preservation actions but the original last-modified dates were recovered and are recorded at file level.

Created by the depositor as part of her PhD coursework at University of York.

The parent folder (2020-008) contains eighteen audio files (constituting ten interviews) and one Microsoft Word document.

Arrangement intervention is level 1 (no intervention by the archivist). The original material has been retained without any intervention by the archives staff. This does mean that the collection may include filenames containing spelling mistakes and duplicate files that were placed in the wrong folder(s) by the creator.

Open

Material is available subject to the usual terms and conditions of access to Archives and Local History collections.

These items were deposited with the archives services on completion of the depositors' PhD at University of York in February 2020

After the files were transferred to the archive, they were stored on the L Drive. Frances Bell was responsible for processing, documenting, and cataloguing the files (April 2020). Frances used the following software to transfer, analyse, and record information about the files: Exactly (transfer files from the L Drive to U Drive), DropBox (upload files to transfer to PC), AVG Virus Scan, Karen's Directory Printer (generate detailed directory information), Microsoft Excel (import Karen txt files into one worksheet, create high-level description of files), Teracopy (copy files from DropBox folder into AIP>2020-002-originals and make copies of originals in AIP>2020-002-admin-working-copies), DROID* (generate profile of files to examine file formats and compare checksums with Karen Directory Printer information), AVP Fixity (setup monthly fixity check)*, JHOVE (run report to check all files well-formed and valid), Exif (extract additional metadata), Bulk Extractor (run report to check for personal information), Microsoft Word (log all processing actions).

*DROID failed to identify the file formats of some of the recordings but did identify the file extensions, which have been logged at file level.

*The AVP Fixity check failed and this was reported with the company who said there was a short-term issue with the software. They are working to fix it, and action is required to setup monthly fixity reports on these files again.

See also York Normandy Veterans archive (NVA).