Accessioning

The first consideration in the organisation of a collection of oral history recordings is how best to identify them as individual units for cataloguing. The most practical approach is to treat each complete interview, regardless of length, as the unit to be catalogued. Each interview should be represented by a unique number, which can then be used to bring together or cross-refer all relevant data such as informant's personal details, the subject content of the interview, the transcript and all finding aids such as index entries.

Accession numbers should be allocated from a single consecutive series. Attempts to reflect subject groupings or other patterns of arrangement by reserving 'runs' of numbers within this series are generally counter-productive. The reserved run may be too long or too short, the subject classifications may prove difficult to define, and the usefulness of the accessions register as an immediate guide to the size of the collection is effectively destroyed.

The maintenance of an up to date accessions register should be the first priority of the cataloguing staff of the collection. The information contained in the register need not be extensive, especially if full cataloguing is not falling too far behind accessioning. It should, however, be adequate to indicate the size of the item, the date of acquisition, the source and method of acquisition (eg 'recording', 'purchase', 'exchange', etc) and the nature of the item. For example:

In this table the allotted accession number 000731 identities the individual interview: 000731/08 indicates that eight reels of tape together comprise interview 731. Reference to parts of the interview may be made by adding a third element to the number. For example, an index reference to the fact that Mr Wallace talks about his service on H.MS Repulse in reel six of his eight reel interview would specify 000731/08/06.