We are now one year in to An Oral History of British Science (OHBS) and we feel that we are making good progress, with 24 audio life-story interviews and one video interview completed, and a further 12 interviews underway.
As well as the oral history audio interviews one of the major objectives within OHBS is to create a new history of science online resource which will provide access to the oral history interviews, link the interview data to other relevant digital objects (such as photographs) and act as a gateway to other resources and scientific holdings which are held in other archives around the country (more about the project outputs can be found in the project proposal). Phase one of this aim is to create an online presence for the project through the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings (ASR) website.
I am pleased to announce that the first batch of interviews from OHBS are now on ASR and accessible via streaming to a world wide audience! Listen to Janet Thomson recounting her first visit to Antarctica, Geoff Tootill discussing the first Manchester computer, and Professor Robert Hinde talking about his work as a biologist and social scientist. The interviews from OHBS sit alongside interviews with scientists that were already on ASR (Joseph Rotblat, Max Perutz, Josephine Barnes, Aaron Klug and Hubert Frank Woods) and form a new ‘Oral history of British science’ package; we hope to load the next batch of completed interviews in a few months. Please click here to browse and listen to the recordings.
