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: audiorecording, video, or transcripts

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

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 and organized, coherent version

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

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

Sources of Oral history UW Libraries Catalog (interviews or oral history) and japanese americans JARDA oral histories Densho (registration required for complete access)

Manuscripts

What are manuscripts? Unpublished, unique material usually created by a single individual or organization Formats Letters Diaries Photographs Objects Clippings

Using manuscript collections Collections are organized by person or organization Unique material so high security Some use is restricted Collections can range in size from a few items to thousands Access is via finding aids, descriptions of the collection sometime at a macro level other times at the micro level

Manuscript collections at the UW Located in Special Collections (basement of Allen S) Selected finding aids online daids/