Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper discusses potential approaches for handling the legal, ethical, and data security challenges of a video-based oral history project including multiple organisations; building on experience from the Film Bang research project with film and television professionals in Scotland. The project, aiming for both research and preservation, is a collaboration between four academic and industry partners (Edinburgh Napier University, University of Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, and Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities). While the collaborative approach has enabled the sharing of resources and expertise in many areas, it has also created additional demands, given the differences in internal policies, procedures and practices from partner organisations. There have been, for example, questions about who should own the copyright of the recordings; how data should be shared between partner organisations; and how to manage rights, permissions, and access to the content. Oral History organisations, such as the Oral History Society in the UK and the Oral History Association in the US, provide guidelines on some of these issues; however, the implementation of any best practice seems more complex in projects with multiple objectives and partners. The paper comments on how these issues have been addressed in the project, while at the same time safeguarding the fundamental rights of interviewees and integrity of the research process.