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Oral histories

Oral histories. What is oral history?. Recorded interviews of spoken memories and personal commentaries of historical significance Dialogue between interviewer and interviewee – a product of both people Formats: audio recording, video, or transcripts. Challenges of using oral histories.

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Oral histories

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  1. Oral histories

  2. What is oral history? • Recorded interviews of spoken memories and personal commentaries of historical significance • Dialogue between interviewer and interviewee – a product of both people • Formats: audio recording, video, or transcripts

  3. Challenges of using oral histories • Conversations are nonlinear, there may be false starts, dead ends, rambling • Oral history is a mixture of fact and opinion, are inherently subjective and individualistic and reflect personal biases • Need to balance oral history with other evidence

  4. Memory & oral history • Oral history is based on memory • Memory is fallible • Memory erodes over time • Memories are selective • Memories are condensed over time • Memories produce a jigsaw of the past, not necessarily an organized, coherent version

  5. Strengths of oral history • Voice of the common person • Provided sense of the times, a direct life experience • Provide information that isn’t available in other historic sources • Provides a personal angle on historical events

  6. Evaluating oral history • Who is saying what, to whom, for what purpose, and under what circumstances • Interviewee/narrator • Interviewer • Content of interview • Purpose of interview • Location of interview

  7. Sources of oral history • UW Libraries Catalog(interviews or oral history) and civil rights(interviews or oral history) and vietnam • Veteran’s History Projecthttp://www.loc.gov/vets/ • Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Projecthttp://depts.washington.edu/civilr/ • In the First Personhttp://www.inthefirstperson.com/firp/index.aspx

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