My first introduction to Oral Histories was in 2022, when I began summarising interviews with conservationists at the Archives at NCBS. The summary would consist of a document with archival identifiers, a biography, and an abstract featuring indexed headings with details under each. Bound by deadlines, however, we had to streamline this time-consuming process. The final product has now taken a more concise form – the identifiers, fields, biography and only the indexed headings, without the detailed, flowery summaries.
As I worked on the summaries I was asked to flag any sections that I felt were sensitive. This was the first time I did a crude “sensitivity review”. I remember struggling to identify exactly what sensitive information was, it remained an afterthought, as I prioritised the summaries over the review.
In July 2024, I met with Hari Sridhar and expressed interest in exploring other facets of the archival process, whereupon he suggested trying my hand at developing the sensitivity framework. After mulling over it, I agreed. In order to get a sense of what sensitive information is, I was handed over two documents- which continue to serve as a crucial reference-point for the Archives at NCBS . One was an Excel sheet demarcating information into broad categories of sensitivity by in-house archivists Deepika S and Hari Sridhar. And the second, was a document titled, “How-to-do-sensitivity-reviews-v2.0-3.” by the Oral History Society. The latter initially felt overwhelming, as I started from scratch – familiarising myself with the Oral History Interview processes of various organisations (including ours) and the various iterations to try to define what sensitive information was.
Soon, I was able to grasp the critical nuances of the OHS sensitivity document. A sensitivity review cannot be a one-stop step during the processing of the interview. It needs to be considered before, during and after conducting the interview, in different capacities.
In the new framework (currently in progress), we have introduced checkpoints for sensitivity throughout the whole process. A series of mostly straightforward yes-no questions will determine whether the content is to be marked red (to be muted), green (to keep), or grey (to check with the interviewee). The reviews cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach as no two interviewees will ever say the same thing in the same way, and the larger contexts in which they make comments will also change. The challenge lies in balancing the responsibility to protect interviewees, the archives and the third person, with the desire to make the content accessible to the public.
There were other things to ponder as we worked on the senstivity review framework – India’s defamation laws, the quality and fidelity of transcripts, growing privacy concerns vis-a-vis increasing reliance on AI transcription apps, giving rise to unsecured data. In addition, we thought of potential modifications to the consent forms and NDAs to cover accidentally sharing sensitive information – tfw one has a chat over a cup of tea and ends up actually spilling the tea.
As naive as it may sound, I realised that OH interviews are quite different from TV or radio interviews, or the podcast format. OH interviews are primary sources of information, and are meant to be eventually accessible and discoverable by the public. This means that sensitive portions of OH interviews will probably never be muted forever (unless the interviewee specifically asks for it– we still need to figure this bit out). In the future that we may live to see, we need to be flexible to accommodate requests by interviewees to redact portions even after publishing, while fulfilling our role as a public archive committed to making our materials available online. Our goal as archivists is to identify what is sensitive at present, in this day and age, and to predict a safe date when it could be deemed to be less sensitive, beyond our own lifespans. It requires us to imagine a time in the (distant) future where the interviewee or the third party is dead, the archives remain flourishing, and another archivist revisits this interview to decide whether or not to make it public. This feels bittersweet, and perhaps, daunting – as I adjust to the novelty of predicting the fate of an OH interview.
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