Filling the ‘Gaps’ in the Representation of Australia’s Cultural Diversity: The Multicultural Imaginary of the NLA’s Oral History Collection

ABSTRACT

In Australia’s National Library, the acquisition or commissioning of oral histories is accepted as a method by which their representative mission as socially inclusive and culturally diverse institution can be fulfilled. In this goal, oral history projects which focus on underdocumented, minoritised or marginalised individuals, groups or communities commonly stake their value on the claim that such projects can work to fill the ‘gaps’ in the national story, contribute to a more complete historical record, or recover lost, overlooked or hidden histories. Drawing on the NLA’s institutional documentation, this paper develops the findings of an empirical examination of the NLA’s oral history collection. This examination found a significant mismatch between representations of the oral history collection as diverse and the actual number of ‘diverse’ interviews. Using the analytic lens provided by critical librarianship, this paper considers the implications of these findings and argues for greater recognition of the culturally positioned nature of oral history methodology. It is suggested that by re-thinking oral history’s neutrality, space might be found within collections for a diversity of oral literacies and ‘unique epistemologies ways of knowing, languages, and histories’.

KEYWORDS:

• Oral history collections
• cultural diversity
• multiculturalism
• critical librarianship

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the reviewers for their helpful comments. Thanks also to my colleagues Ian McShane and Kieran Hegarty for their thoughtful contributions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The total number of projects (306) and interviews (16,828) located in the NLA catalogue by the analysis on which this article is based differs from the number of oral history recordings reported by the NLA (25,388 as at end of 2019–20). See https://www.nla.gov.au/collections/statistics.

2. The data is based on the NLA catalogue as at May 2021.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grant [LP170100222].

Notes on contributors

Jodie Boyd

Dr Jodie Boyd is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University. She is a member of the Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries project. She holds a PhD in history and is a former law librarian. Jodie researches and publishes in cultural policy, library studies, legal and trade history, and in oral history.