Introduction to Data Protection Legislation (UK GDPR) for Oral Historians Workshop
Run by the British Library’s oral history department and the Oral History Society, this workshop will explore the impact of UK General Data Protection Legislation (GDPR) on the work of oral historians, including discussion of some sample scenarios.
The UK Data Protection Act came into effect on 25 May 2018 and applies to any organisation, individual or group which collects personal data. It embraces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and has been unchanged by the UK’s departure from the European Union. This applies to oral history projects, charities, community organisations, youth groups, libraries, museums, archives, educational organisations, and individual researchers whether salaried, self-employed or voluntary.
Who is the workshop for?
The workshop is aimed at interviewers, researchers, archivists and project managers who are recording and collecting recorded testimonies and narrative data for the purposes of archiving and public access/reuse.
Further resources
For guidance on data protection for oral historians and organisations holding oral history interviews see the Oral History Society advice pages.
Please note:
- There will be no refunds for cancelled places.
- Due to high demand and in order to ensure that each course has attendees with a variety of interests and backgrounds, a maximum of two people from any one institution may book to attend each course.
- There are two methods of payment. You can pay online via PayPal, debit or credit card or you can make an offline payment where an invoice will be sent to your organisation. Please select the appropriate option in the booking form.
- If you choose to pay by invoice please note that payments for training courses will be made to National Life Stories (NLS), and the invoice will be sent by email from NLS within ten working days of your booking. Contact the Training Coordinator if you require further details for your purchase order number.
- In booking this training course you agree to follow the OHS Code of Conduct.
Please contact the Training Coordinator if you would like to be notified of future dates.
Course schedule
This online training workshop is delivered over Zoom video call. The programme is as follows (please note this is a sample structure and may differ on the day).
Timezone: London, UK.
Hourly Schedule
Online workshop
- 09:30 - 10:00
- Welcome and introductions
- 10:00 - 11:05
- Introduction to UK GDPR
- 11:05 - 11:15
- Break
- 11:15 - 11:25
- Key steps for GDPR compliance
- Forms for current projects, data sensitivity awareness, sensitivity reviewing, making redactions, and a worked example
- 12:25 - 12:30
- Mini break
- 12:30 - 13:05
- Practical group session: Scenarios
- 13:05 - 13:20
- Quick-fire quiz answers and discussion
- 13:20 - 13:30
- Q&A
- 20 Jan 2027
- 9:30 am - 1:30 pm
- Zoom call Time zone: London, United Kingdom GB
Organizer
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Camille Johnston
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Email
[email protected] Oral History Training Administrator
Speakers
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Camille JohnstonBL/OHS Training Coordinator, OHS Administrator, Editor of Current British WorkI am an archivist specialising in oral history and have worked within the National Life Stories team at the British Library since 2017. I am particularly interested in finding ways to improve access to archives and have been involved with the production of two new websites for the British Library – ‘Voices of art’ and ‘Voices of British theatre design’ – which highlight audio from the collections within a series of articles. Since 2018 I have also coordinated the Oral History Society/NLS training programme, organising in-person and online oral history training courses for individuals and projects across the UK. Before training to become an archivist at UCL I completed studies in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts in London and Konstfack in Stockholm.
I am the editor for the Current British Work section of the Oral History journal, so please get in touch to tell me about your oral history projects, new websites, exhibitions and publications.
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Mary StewartBL/OHS Trainer; OHS Trustee; Lead Curator of Oral History at the British Library; Director of National Life StoriesI am Lead Curator of Oral History at the British Library and Director of National Life Stories, the oral history fieldwork charity. It has been my privilege to be a Trustee of the Society since 2008, and I recently led a review of the Society’s governance. I have helped to organise many OHS conferences and events, I sit on the Society’s Finance Sub-Committee and am an accredited Oral History Society/British Library trainer specialising in courses on Archival Management of Oral History and Data Protection. As part of the British Library’s oral history team I work to add diverse voices from across the UK to the Library’s Sound Archive, particularly through academic and community partnerships, and I recently was curatorial lead on an audio resource exploring the history of domestic life. I have project-managed several oral history fieldwork projects gathering long life story interviews – including on the UK Water Industry and Baring Bank. I am currently researching how oral history and family history intersect, which builds upon my studies of my own family history, and I have been delighted to collaborate with fellow OHS Trustees on advice for family historians using oral history. As a member of the #HistoriansCollaborate Network, we are bringing together academic, community and family historians, with archive and museum professionals to interrogate how we research the past in order to foster better collaboration.
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Rob PerksBL/OHS Trainer; OHS SecretaryI first discovered oral history when I was studying for a doctorate in political history, since when I helped establish the Bradford Heritage Recording Project in the early 1980s, working as a museum curator, before a period in television. Since 1988 I have been Lead Curator of Oral History at the British Library, and Director of National Life Stories since 1996, heading a team of interviewers, archivists and transcribers involved in oral history collecting and fieldwork in a variety of sectors: from arts and crafts to business and finance, from the utilities to science, from architecture to publishing. I’ve been Secretary of the Oral History Society and an editor of Oral History Journal since the later 1980s. I’ve acted as an advisor to a range of oral history organisations around the world, including the National Lottery Heritage Fund (HLF) and BBC Radio in the UK, and projects in Canada, Greece, India, Australia, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, China and Ireland. In 2007 I was awarded an honorary DLitt by the University of Huddersfield. My publications include The Oral History Reader (Routledge, third edition 2015, with Al Thomson). I’m currently busy with ‘Unlocking Our Sound Heritage’, an ambitious five-year £18.8m project to digitally preserve 100,000 of the nation’s most rare and vulnerable sound recordings, both at the British Library and around the UK, working with a consortium partnership network of ten regional audio preservation centres.
