Queer Coding the Audio Archive: Linked Data and the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT) Oral History Tapes

This paper was presented at the SpokenWeb Symposium 2023: Reverb: Echo-Locations of Sound and Space. Is metadata a “literary audio event?” The Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT) Oral History Tapes were discussed as a contribution to SpokenWeb, because they enhance 2SLGBTQIA+ content in the metadata from literary events. The oral history tapes of this collection are restricted; therefore, the main goal of this work is not necessarily to make the files public, but to develop a methods approach to working with descriptive metadata of sensitive files. We hope the project will serve as a case study of ethical data practices that can then be shared with 2SLGBTQIA+ community members, wider researcher communities, archivists, and librarians about how to work with the nuances of digitization and access to sensitive material in historical context. The LOOT Oral History Project interview tapes were recorded during 1988-1990 by sociologist Becki Ross and are extensively quoted in The House that Jill Built. Each of the interviews provides a unique perspective on LOOT’s four-year existence (1976-1980) and the politics of a particular Lesbian community located in Toronto (Ross 1995), that overlaps with poetic and publishing communities in the Spoken Web network. What are the ethics of making these overlaps visible through metadata work, even if the content of the tapes must remain restricted? This paper details the technical approach used to digitize and describe these analogue audio tapes according to archival standards and to the Spoken Web metadata schema. A Data Management Plan was key to documenting our procedures for respecting ethical guidelines (Morissette et al 2021).