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Coming Out of the Archive: Intergenerational archival temporalities in the digitization of the LOOT oral history tapes
Borealis
Macarios, Jasmin; Tayler, Felicity — 2024-10-08 The genre of oral history tapes is a powerful form of mediated oral transmission of knowledge between geographically dispersed communities and generations. The act of listening to recordings of stories of survival and joy, forms affective bonds akin to kinship networks for listeners who identify with marginalized sexualities or genders (Chenier 2014). This talk will explore the case of the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT) oral history tapes as an example of queer intergenerational memory transmission. The LOOT Oral History Project interview tapes were recorded during 1988-1990 by sociologist Becki Ross and are extensively quoted in The House that Jill Built: A Lesbian Nation in Formation. Each of the interviews provides a unique perspective on LOOT’s four-year existence (1976-1980) and the politics of a particular Lesbian community located in Toronto (Ross 1995), that overlaps with poetic and publishing communities in the Spoken Web network. The stakes of intellectual property and privacy such as these tapes are perceived as high risk in digital environments, particularly when working with analogue materials that pre-date digitization and the Internet. While approaching the digitization of the LOOT tapes, we have taken into mind the historical, structural and harm that privacy law and intellectual property law now continue to perpetuate in the environment of digital archives. This talk will explore our approach through a framework of archival temporalities (Caswell 2021), as we work to navigate intergenerational contexts and reconcile them with our own contexts and identities as queer researchers.
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Queer Coding the Audio Archive: Linked Data and the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT) Oral History Tapes
Borealis
Macarios, Jasmin; Tayler, Felicity — 2023-10-25 This paper was presented at the SpokenWeb Symposium 2023: Reverb: Echo-Locations of Sound and Space. Is metadata a “literary audio event?” The Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT) Oral History Tapes were discussed as a contribution to SpokenWeb, because they enhance 2SLGBTQIA+ content in the metadata from literary events. The oral history tapes of this collection are restricted; therefore, the main goal of this work is not necessarily to make the files public, but to develop a methods approach to working with descriptive metadata of sensitive files. We hope the project will serve as a case study of ethical data practices that can then be shared with 2SLGBTQIA+ community members, wider researcher communities, archivists, and librarians about how to work with the nuances of digitization and access to sensitive material in historical context. The LOOT Oral History Project interview tapes were recorded during 1988-1990 by sociologist Becki Ross and are extensively quoted in The House that Jill Built. Each of the interviews provides a unique perspective on LOOT’s four-year existence (1976-1980) and the politics of a particular Lesbian community located in Toronto (Ross 1995), that overlaps with poetic and publishing communities in the Spoken Web network. What are the ethics of making these overlaps visible through metadata work, even if the content of the tapes must remain restricted? This paper details the technical approach used to digitize and describe these analogue audio tapes according to archival standards and to the Spoken Web metadata schema. A Data Management Plan was key to documenting our procedures for respecting ethical guidelines (Morissette et al 2021).
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Putting a hold on Queer Coding the Audio Archive: Ethical Data and the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT) Oral History Tapes
Borealis
Tayler, Felicity; Macarios, Jasmin — 2023-10-25 This paper was presented at the SpokenWeb Archives Research Workshop (Sept. 2023) The LOOT Oral History Project interview tapes were recorded during 1988-1990 by sociologist Becki Ross and are extensively quoted in The House that Jill Built. Each of the interviews provides a unique perspective on LOOT’s four-year existence (1976-1980) and the politics of a particular Lesbian community located in Toronto (Ross 1995), that overlaps with poetic and publishing communities in the Spoken Web network. What are the ethics of making these overlaps visible through metadata work, even if the content of the tapes must remain restricted? The genre of oral history tapes is a powerful form of mediated oral transmission of knowledge between geographically dispersed communities and generations. The act of listening to recordings of stories of survival and joy, forms affective bonds akin to kinship networks for listeners who identify with marginalized sexualities or genders (Chenier 2014). But what does it mean when the ethical choice is to put a hold on listening to the tapes until we sort out permissions and donor agreements to institutional archives? El Chenier describes this limbo as a “return to the closet” that queer communities have faced within digital archiving spaces. Because the stakes of intellectual property and privacy are perceived as high risk in digital environments, particularly when working with analogue materials that pre-date digitization and the Internet.

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(Author: Macarios, Jasmin)

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