British Antarctic Oral History Project

This is a joint project between the BAS Club, BAS, UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) and Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI).

Aims

• To preserve and make accessible the unofficial history of the British presence in Antarctica, within living memory, by recording the reminiscences of a sample of those individuals who were personally involved
• To acquire first-hand accounts of events, activities, background culture etc which are unlikely to be represented in official archives
• To capture an essence of individuals by recording their memories in their own words and/or still or moving images of them in conversation

Background

Prior to 2009 some oral history recordings had been made separately by BAS and SPRI, but recently new funding sources (from the BAS Club, and in particular from the UKAHT) and the recruitment of a group of volunteers has enabled this work to be accelerated and brought under a joint umbrella.

Procedure

A coordinating committee, which includes representatives of all four organisations, oversees the project from the selection of interviewees to the final archiving of the recordings. It meets occasionally and is in frequent contact by email.

Potential interviewees are contacted and, if they agree to be interviewed, some research is done using the BAS archives in Cambridge and is provided in advance to the interviewer. Interviews are typically two hours, but may be around forty five minutes if several are done at a reunion. Afterwards a transcript of the interview is made, and both audio (or video) recording and transcript are catalogued and lodged in BAS archives. They may be borrowed by any interested member of the public (subject to certain conditions). A long term aspiration is to make them available over the Internet.

The project follows standards and guidance issued by the Oral History Society and the British Library Sound Archive.

Progress

At the time of writing (January 2010) around 20 interviews have been carrried out since the project began in March 2009, though not all have yet been fully transcribed and archived. Several more are planned in future. Together with the pre-existing ones, there are currently about 90 oral history recordings in the BAS archives.

Coordinators

• Amanda Lynnes - UKAHT and overall project coordinator
• Allan Wearden - BAS Club coordinator
• Joanna Rae - BAS coordinator
• Naomi Boneham - SPRI coordinator

BAS Club members who would like to help the project as volunteers, or suggest a potential interviewee, should contact Allan Wearden on 01254 247541 or Andy Smith on andy@zfids.org.uk. Volunteers may choose to research the background of selected candidates, transcribe interviews, or listen to interviews to identify snippets for the web.

British Antarctic Survey Homepage