The Digital Story Bank: A Novel Means of Archiving, Organising, and Accessing Oral Histories

Communities and organisations, whether corporate, community-centred orvolunteer-driven, hold rich histories and often keep important collections,yet the recording and archiving of this history and historical ephemera can beoverlooked. When archiving is carried out, the stories of communities maybe removed from their context and transferred to a central location. Thisraises ethical considerations about supporting communities’ ownership ofthe stories they have created. This article demonstrates how a new tool – the‘Digital Story Bank’ – allows communities and organisations to manage andarchive their own stories and historical material. This article subsequentlyproposes that by making use of the tool, communities’ and organisations’ability to manage their own history could open up further potential to allowstories to remain in the places they were made – where they are most meaningful. This paper demonstrates how the Digital Story Bank, created byresearchers at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), was designed and piloted, and explores the potential for the tool to support place-basednarratives, particularly in remote communities where issues of place andstory are particularly powerful