Describing Oral History Interviews: A Comparative Study of Cataloging Schemas and Metadata Practices

This paper examines the descriptive challenges of Oral History interviews, by comparing records from the Library of Congress and the British Library, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, Oral History Metadata Synchronizer, and the WarMemoirSampo. The research analyzes how different metadata schemas handle narrative complexity, temporal granularity, and semantic interoperability. The findings highlight a shift in practice: while legacy systems often relegate granular interview content to human-readable notes, semantic web-based models transform linear narratives into machine-actionable nodes within knowledge graphs. The article concludes by proposing a Metadata Application Profile designed to bridge these descriptive gaps.