Ethical Editing of Oral Histories: The Experience of the Birmingham Children's Homes Project Archivist

Abstract

This article describes the legal and ethical problems encountered by the Birmingham Children's Homes Project while collecting oral history interviews from former residents and staff of children's homes. The article briefly discusses the background to the project and the wider debate about re-use of data. It then explains the measures considered and undertaken to edit transcripts of the interviews in order to avoid identifying former looked-after children and to remove remarks made by interviewees which could amount to defamation, while retaining enough content and context to make them valuable resources for both general researchers and former residents of children's homes.