Oral History Project - Memories of Nursing

[Francis Biley]

After almost a year of planning, I have got a new project up and running called Memories of Nursing. The aim of this is to record retired nurses' stories using a chronological/autobiographic method. The project has full ethical approval from Bournemouth University, consists of a team of five researchers, web designers and senior advisors on oral history and archival methods. It uses state of the art digital recording equipment. The aim is to gather as many detailed professional and life histories together as possible in order to make our profession more visible, and to create an archive for the future.

If you are a retired nurse and would like to give some of your time to tell your story, please contact me, Fran Biley, at

fbiley@bournemouth.ac.uk

Regards to all, Fran

Dr Francis C Biley
Associate Professor, Bournemouth University
(and badge/ephemera collector)

[wilfb]

Hi Francis,

Firstly let me offer my sincere good wishes for a successful project. I do hope that your post finds members who may be willing to participate. I personally feel that the universities have not, so far, done nearly enough to preserve individual nurse histories. This has been, in my view, a serious omission by those well placed to carry out such research. Perhaps there have been more pressing demands...

Whatever, now we have a worthwhile project conducted under the auspices of a university, lets hope that individuals help to preserve a little more of the history of the nursing profession by participating. If only every university ran just one such project there might be enormous progress in this area. Perhaps practising nurses would gain an additional insight into the profession, and perhaps some of the more valuable lessons of our history would be passed down.

I do have one question which I feel sure will occur to prospective participants and the generally interested alike. That is, will we all hear about/have access to the results of the research - or will they be filed away in a library somewhere where only the academically inclined will ever notice them. Put more simply - will we all know about and be able to see the results?

Very Best of luck with the project, I hope that it will be highly successful.

WB.

[Francis Biley]

Thank you very much Wilf for your support. I agree that there has not been enough done to preserve our history and also agree that we have much to learn from those who went before us. I remember years ago that Peter and I and others discussed the need for a nursing museum....now wouldnt that be nice?

One university already does have a project running, see http://www.nursesvoices.org.uk/ but that has a very specific remit. My project aims to collect a general, that is country wide, history of nursing.

The oral histories will be available for anybody to borrow and/or listen to in the Bournemouth University Library Archive, and am also hoping to deposit copies of the sound files in the British Library Oral History Collection and perhaps elsewhere. In addition, I have constructed a website that will give details of the project and will include extracts from the interviews. Because of the very high quality of the recordings the sound file sizes can get huge, about ?800MB per hour of recording, so I will only upload short clips. The webpage is at a very early stage of development at the moment, and needs much refinement, but you might like to take a quick look at it here http://ihcs.bournemouth.ac.uk/oral/index.html. Click on 'archive' to here a clip from our first informant.

Be very interested to hear all your thoughts on this project. Regards, Fran

[backman]

Hi Fran,

I am familiar with the St Georges Project and am a great fan of oral history projects.The Oral history team from Southampton Museums produced some good work and publications when I worked in the area in the late 80's and early 90's.Whilst they had a few individual nursing histories I thought it would be great for a more focussed project around healthcare so I am glad to see and support your efforts.Good luck!
I believe the Rcn is keen to increase the profile of its Archival holdings by putting some of these online but no sign of this yet,I will try and keep all informed as I learn more.

[wilfb]

Hi Fran,

You already know my feelings about preserving our professional history by any means possible - they have been strongly reinforced on several occasions by Peter (backman) - who has enthusiastically led me into many hours of input into the subject with absolutely no consideration of my age!

I have been to the project website. In answer to your query on opinion - well, leaving out bells and whistles (which you obviously did to good effect) I would say that the site is Clean; Clear; and Concise. It does what it says it does without fuss, song or dance.

Very usable. I hope that you will get a few visitors from among our users here - listening to the stories of the career happenings of retired nurses can be very illuminating. Anyone interested can hear some there.

W. 

[backman]

Latest feedback from the RCN re their archive Webpages is that these have been delayed due to other organisational priorities( Which says it all really!).Unfortunately this had been proposed to coincide with RCN Congress this week and was advertised in their conference literature but viewers are at present met by an error page; www.rcn.org.uk/archive
What is online are some of the articles from past years from the RCN's research society;
http://www.rcn.org.uk/development/researchanddevelopment/rs/publications_and_position_statements/rcn_study_in_nursing_care_project

[eric]

Francis,
       
I wish you every success in this venture and as you are actively involved I trust you might be able to help me.

I'm a member of Northern Ireland RCN History Forum and we have a lot of audio tapes of oral histories. I'd like your opinion on 2 issues namely; -

1.   What best way to digitalise these old audio tapes, so they can be stored, kept on computer (and my aim eventually would be to make available on RCN website at some stage)?

2.   I now need to replace ALL old audio cassette recorders and would appreciate advice on replacement so future oral histories can be digitalised etc. What you using and its cost, etc??

Would value your comments, suggestions and recommendations.

Thanks

Eric

[Francis Biley]

Hello,

I just though I'd give you a quick update on the oral history project. Progress is slow, due to work pressures, but we have now completed about six interviews, some up to about 5 hrs long. At some time in the future these will be made available widely.

Just to give you a flavour of what is being uncovered, this week I am due to do my last interview with Muriel Chalkley (does anybody have her badges/certs?), who trained on the Wirral in the 40s/50s, and spent 19 years as a missionary in Kenya. Not only do I have her story, but I have two albums of photographs covering the whole of her career, certs from Kenya, her GNC badge, and more...altogether wonderful archival material. The pics have been scanned, one day I may be able to post them here, they are wonderful.

Regards, Fran

[backman]

Good to see you are making progress Fran,I look forward to eventually being able to access these stories as they sound finding.I'm sure we all appreciate the time pressures of balancing work requirements against the support for the preservation of our history,I really wish I had the time to do more.
Glad to see a photo album being supported with documentation and history,this is so frequently lost with no clue as to the people pictured.I have recently acquired a batch of small snapshots relating to the Brompton Hospital and Frimley Sanatorium but with absolutely no details at all. I am slowly adding these to the Nursing badges site;  http://nursinghistory.multiply.com/photos/album/23/Brompton_Hospital_Frimley_Sanatorium

[wilfb]

Hi Peter, Fran.

Looking at some of those ladies Peter - just spent a few minutes on the nursing history site - I don't think that I would ever dare admiting to finding ill...  What a superb preventive care programme.  Can we perhaps expect another donation of photographs herein at schoolsofnursing in the near future? That would be magic.

I was going to say that those pictures would be worth paying for - but then I remembered that this site is as much your responsibilty (!) as mine... (Keep well).

And Fran has my best wishes and full support - I wonder if we can point any retired nurse who may be interested at you Fran?

I certainly don't have any of the badges you seek - but you never know, they might just turn up...

B. Regards.
Will.

[Francis Biley]

Peter/Wilf et al,

I am quite lucky, I am actually being paid to do this work!

Wilf - yes please, I will be happy to be contacted by any retired nurses, at the moment i am working up a project to interview mentalhealth nurses as well...our voices seem virtually absent from the histories

Regards, Fran

[moijan]

Hi Fran
what an exciting project.
Jan

[jock57]

hello Fran
glad to hear you are doing mental health history, not yet retired, but would be willing to help with your project in the future.

[AberdeenMuseums]

Hello Fran,

This sounds like a wonderful project - I look forward to hearing how it all goes.  Do you have an intended outcome like a book or study etc?

We have a good solid collection of nursing material here in Aberdeen, including a handful of oral histories.  I'm hoping to expand the oral hsitories as I work on my nursing exhibition due this Winter. 

Jenny
Curator - visit www.aagm.co.uk

[backman]

 I see that a book and audio CD have been just been published for the St George's London project.
http://www.nursesvoices.org.uk/
Memories of Nursing at St George's London (1930-1990) 

Yet another drain on my finances !!! Also a separate CD is available.