Continue reading »]]> http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/human-subjects-and-irb-review/feed/ 0 http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/making-sense-of-oral-history/ http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/making-sense-of-oral-history/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:03:37 +0000 nick http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/?p=3808 Making Sense of Oral History is a post from: Oral History in the Digital Age

Continue reading »]]> http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/making-sense-of-oral-history/feed/ 0 interviewing,oral history,shopes Making Sense of Oral History by Linda Shopes Making Sense of Oral History offers a place for students and teachers to begin working with oral history interviews as historical evidence. Written by Linda Shopes, Making Sense of Oral History by Linda Shopes Making Sense of Oral History offers a place for students and teachers to begin working with oral history interviews as historical evidence. Written by Linda Shopes, this guide presents an overview of oral history and ways historians use it, tips on what questions to ask when reading or listening to oral history interviews, a sample interpretation of an interview, an annotated bibliography, and a guide to finding and using oral history online. Linda Shopes is a historian at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. She has worked on, consulted for, and written about oral history projects for more than twenty-five years. She is co-editor of The Baltimore Book: New Views of Local History and is past president of the Oral History Association.  Republished from http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/what.html with permission of author. Getting Started What is Oral History? "Oral History" is a maddeningly imprecise term: it is used to refer to formal, rehearsed accounts of the past presented by culturally sanctioned tradition-bearers; to informal conversations about "the old days" among family members, neighbors, or coworkers; to printed compilations of stories told about past times and present experiences; and to recorded interviews with individuals deemed to have an important story to tell. Each of these uses of the term has a certain currency. Unquestionably, most people throughout history have learned about the past through the spoken word. Moreover, for generations history-conscious individuals have preserved others' firsthand accounts of the past for the record, often precisely at the moment when the historical actors themselves, and with them their memories, were about to pass from the scene. Shortly after Abraham Lincoln's death in 1865, for example, his secretary, John G. Nicolay, and law partner, William Herndon, gathered recollections of the sixteenth president, including some from interviews, from people who had known and worked with him. Similarly, social investigators historically have obtained essential information about living and working conditions by talking with the people who experienced them. Thus, the Pittsburgh Survey, a Progressive Era investigation of social conditions in that city designed to educate the public and prod it towards civic reform, relied heavily on evidence obtained from oral sources. Among the most notable of these early efforts to collect oral accounts of the past are the thousands of life histories recorded by Federal Writers Project [FWP] workers during the late 1930s and early 1940s. An agency of the New Deal Works Progress Administration, the FWP was deeply populist in intent and orientation; the life histories were designed to document the diversity of the American experience and ways ordinary people were coping with the hardships of the Great Depression. Plans for their publication fell victim to federal budget cuts and a reorientation of national priorities as World War II drew near; most of them remain in manuscript form at the Library of Congress and other repositories around the country. The best known of the FWP life histories are the "slave narratives" elicited from elderly former slaves living in the South; other narratives were collected from a variety of regional, occupational, and ethnic groups. Though of considerable value, early efforts to record firsthand accounts of the past can be termed "oral history" by only the most generous of definitions. While methods of eliciting and recording them were more or less rigorous in any given case, the absence of audio- and videotape recorders--or digital recording devices--necessitated reliance on human note-takers, thus raising questions about reliability and veracity. Many early interviews were also idiosyncratic or extemporaneous efforts, conducted with no intention of developing a permanent archival collection. Thus, Oral History in the Digital Age no 21 http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/thinking-big-don-ritchie/ http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/thinking-big-don-ritchie/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2012 13:53:04 +0000 dboyd http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/?p=3805 Thinking Big: Don Ritchie is a post from: Oral History in the Digital Age

Continue reading »]]> http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/quick-tips-for-better-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/file-naming-in-the-digital-age/ http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/file-naming-in-the-digital-age/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2012 16:52:30 +0000 nick http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/?p=3575 File Naming in the Digital Age is a post from: Oral History in the Digital Age

Continue reading »]]> http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/08/file-naming-in-the-digital-age/feed/ 0 http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/reservoir-of-memories/ http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/reservoir-of-memories/#comments Fri, 27 Jul 2012 16:01:30 +0000 admin http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/?p=3372 Reservoir of Memories is a post from: Oral History in the Digital Age

Continue reading »]]> http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/reservoir-of-memories/feed/ 0 http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/mapping/ http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/mapping/#comments Fri, 27 Jul 2012 02:51:39 +0000 admin http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/?p=3326 Mapping is a post from: Oral History in the Digital Age

Continue reading »]]> http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/mapping/feed/ 0 http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/video-age/ http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/video-age/#comments Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:57:03 +0000 admin http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/?p=3122 Video Age is a post from: Oral History in the Digital Age

Continue reading »]]> http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/video-age/feed/ 0 http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/overview/ http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/overview/#comments Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:33:14 +0000 admin http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/?p=2691 Overview is a post from: Oral History in the Digital Age

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