Podcasting the archive: an evaluation of audience engagement with a narrative non-fiction podcast series’ published

With thanks as ever to Hazel for the words and so much else…

Podcasting the archive: an evaluation of audience engagement with a narrative non-fiction podcast series is now available in issue 2 of volume 28 of Archives, published last month. I am a co-author of the article alongside Professor Hazel HallMarianne Wilson, and Dr Iain McGregor.

In this work we compare audience engagement with a Second World War archive presented digitally in two formats as: (1) images and text in a Blipfoto journal, and (2) sound in an eight-episode podcast series (which starts with episode 1 here). The main findings reveal differences in levels of engagement for each presentation in respect of entertainment value, learning opportunities, and emotional response. Flexibility of access and authenticity of the archived material were also found to be important to audience engagement, with the nature of contextual information provided alongside the core archive key to the latter. Here we further understanding of facets of audience engagement with digitised archives while opening up new thinking on means of encouraging the general public to interact in more meaningful ways with historical records.

This article is the main output of the Platform to platform (P2P) and Heritage organisations and podcasts: scoping study (HOPSS) projects I led in 2022. The archive in question centres on the outputs of Lorna Beatrice Lloyd (1914-1942), principally her Diary of the war.

For those who do not have subscription access to Archives, the accepted version of the manuscript can be freely downloaded from the article’s record in the Edinburgh Napier University repository.

National award recognises the Platform to Platform project: British Records Association Janette Harley Prize 2022 runner-up

The Platform to Platform project that I led, and which transformed Lorna Lloyd’s Diary of the war into a podcast series has been highly commended as a runner-up for the British Records Association’s (BRA) 2022 Janette Harley Prize. This prize, awarded in memory of archivist Janette Harley (1951-2015), is intended to generate interest in archives, and raise awareness of research and achievements in the world of archives.

Read more about it on Professor Hazel Hall’s blog: https://hazelhall.org/2023/01/16/national-award-recognises-the-platform-to-platform-project-british-records-association-janette-harley-prize-2022-runner-up/

Huge thanks to team-mates who worked so hard on the production of the podcast series: Co-investigators Hazel Hall and Iain McGregor; student production team members Alex Gencs, David Graham, James McLachlan, Andras Peter, and Michael Suttie; performers Bethany Ray (Lorna Lloyd), David Monteath (Theo Lloyd), Richard Godden (newsreader), and Katherine Stephen(announcer).

We are very grateful for the support of the wider community in bringing Lorna’s writing into the public domain, with special thanks to Jake Berger and Emma Gibbs (BBC Archive); Faith Renger (Malvern Museum of Local History); Marianne Wilson (researcher on the sister HOPSS project); Stella Wisdom (British Library); P2P project board members: David Darlington, David MonteathGuy Puzey, Sarah Ames and Sue Dumbleton; the Blipfoto community; the project team at Creative Informatics; and the Lloyd family.

What is Bruce up to in the first half of 2022?

I’ve just updated my list of projects (on my CV page) to include 5 projects that are now current or imminent. They are

  • Platform to Platform, investigating changes in reactions to a historical diary as it moves from a textual platform to an audio platform (podcasts)
  • Heritage organisations and podcasts: scoping study, investigating the research landscape on the role of podcasts in the work of heritage organisations
  • Information Literacy Impact Framework, reviewing relevant literature to create a framework of information literacy impact. (The link is to a post about several new projects in my research group.)
  • Animation and games legacy collection of Scotland, addressing gaps in the documentation of the Scottish animation, visual effects and games sectors
  • Community Councils online 2022, surveying community councils’ online presences.

I’m also doing some marking in April, and contributing to outputs from some previous projects. This includes waiting to see what changes the reviewers want me to make to a paper submitted to ISIC 2022. I can’t tell you how much I want to go to Berlin!

And a big shout out to my colleagues on these projects and outputs: David Brazier, Alison Brettle, Peter Cruickshank, Pritam Chita, Wegene Demeke, Paul Gooding, Hazel Hall, Ingi Helgason, Iain McGregor, Marina Milosheva, Jon Mortimer, Gemma Webster, Marianne Wilson, 2 MSc students on the MSc/CPP programme.