Crossing Boundaries with Secondary Analysis: Implications for Archived Oral History Data

The secondary analysis of archived oral history and qualitative data is a fast expanding area of research, yet little of debates about questions generated or processes involved have been discussed by oral historians. When I gave a paper on this theme at the 2002 International Oral History conference, fired up by my first explorations of someone else's data, I was surprised to find that my audience wasn't equally as excited. Repeating this experience at the European Social Science History conference recently (Bornat, 2008), I came across the same reactions. The exploration of archived oral history interviews presents interesting dilemmas and indeed controversies. Questions about the effect of time passing, changed contexts for analysis and interpretation, the construction and therefore accessibility of the original data and new ethical considerations are amongst the new questions which secondary analysis poses. Applying these questions to the re-use of someone else's data, or even to an earlier investigation of one's own highlighted and accentuates these issues, but not it seems for all oral historians.