Oral History Donations

Are you running a Croydon based project which involves oral histories? Do you wish to donate them to the Museum of Croydon?

Due to a high amount of donations being offered to the Museum of Croydon and Croydon Archives, both past and current oral history projects. The Museum has set up this page to give you the best advice on the donation process, templates and FAQS.

The following information is for both external and internal projects.

Starting the Project

Projects that involve capturing the audio recordings of Croydon’s diverse community is incredible and rewarding work.

We encourage all projects going for funding or having received funding to include the archiving, preservation and donation process within their budget. This means that the legacy of your oral history project can be preserved for future generations.

If your funding is dependent on archiving and preserving the material within Croydon Council’s Borough collections you must contact us at museum@croydon.gov.uk before application is sent. We can not accept all offers of donations into the collections; donations must be in line with our Collecting Development policy and procedures.

Recording oral histories is a rich and rewarding experience, but there are many things to think about before you start. This can include training for taking interviews, choosing the right recording media to copyright and data protection issues.

The Oral History Society offers training and advice for taking oral histories.

This includes, how to include archiving in the workflow of your oral history project.

Step 1: Offer of donation

Complete the form below with the number of items being offered and project description.

Thank you for your kind offer of donation. Please email museum@croydon.gov.uk with any questions.

At this stage, your offer of donation has been accepted. Thank you!

We will ask for the following to be completed and sent to us:

  • Completed transfer of title form

  • Completed oral history listing (see template).

  • Full description of project (1 page)

  • Full transcriptions

  • Copyright and consent permission forms for interviewees / interviewers (or alternative forms of permissions, these are to be agreed with Museum in advance)

  • Any other information

How to donate oral histories

Step 4: Transfer Files

Step 2: Project appraisal

If your project description fits in with the Museum’s collecting policy, we will ask you to complete and email a full listing, using our template below. We will send you our transfer of title form at this stage.

Please do not complete the template if you are not content with terms of transfer and/or you do not have copyright / consent forms that can be transferred with the donations.

Step 5: Transfer Audio

We accept oral history recordings in the following digital format:

  • MP3

  • WAV

Donating both formats is ideal as WAV has better quality and MP3 version is smaller and can be used for easier transfer / access in future.

We require all digital donations to be sent online, accompanied by physical hard copies which will be kept as back up copies in storage.

Physical hard copies in the format of:

  • CD ROM

  • External Hard-drive

CD ROM and external hard-drives are not ideal forms of primary storage, due to deterioration. Therefore they will be kept as back-ups, not master copies.

Alternative formats are to be agreed with Museum in advance.

Step 3: Listing appraisal

The Museum team will then appraise the full listing, making decisions on acceptance. If a project includes a large amount of audio files the Museum team may not have the staff or resource to appraise at this stage. This could mean items will be accepted by the museum for review, accession and/or disposal at a later date.

The Museum does not have budget assigned to the preservation and access of new digital donations. This includes back-up files, conversion of files and storage.

More Info:

Click below to see frequently asked questions:

Oral History guidance and examples: