Online Oral History Support

 

These sites focus attention on the process of doing oral history. Your course assignments ask you to identify the differences between oral history and History (with a capital H). Long before there was written history human culture developed using oral histories.
As you look at some of these sites, think about the ways in which one person's story becomes the story of a family, or of a generation, or an occupational or ethnic group, or a region or country. How does one person's story "fit" into the story of their time?
American Memory
Historical Collections for the National Digital Library, Library of Congress.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html
Ancestry.com
"Search our free new databases, list of free databases, our popular Social Security Death Index (60 million names), the Ancestry World Tree (9.7 million names), Phone and Address Listings, American Genealogical-Biographical Index or Juliana's Links. S earch for Maps or Gazetteers. "
http://www.ancestry.com/main.htm
Family Tree Maker Online  

http://www.familytreemaker.com/backissu.html

Genealogy & Family History on the Web
UW Libraries (Theresa Mudrock.)
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/tm/geneal.html
Interview Absolutely Everyone!
Interviewing tips and information from George Morgan at Ancestor.com
http://www.ancestry.com/columns/george/04-03-98.htm
National Archives and Records Administration
"Our Mission . . . to ensure ready access to essential evidence . . . that documents the rights of American citizens, the actions of federal officials, and the national experience . . . "
http://www.nara.gov/
NARA's Pacific Alaska Region (Seattle)
National Archives and Records Administration, Regional Records Services
http://www.nara.gov/regional/seattle.html
Our Ancestors' Everyday Lives
from "Along Those Lines..." by George G. Morgan at Ancestor.com
http://www.ancestry.com/columns/george/10-23-98.htm
Researching & Writing Family History
"This website was created as a resource for English 198, the writing link to History 201, Survey History of the United States. It lists major research tools and websites for 20th century American history with particular emphasis on family, immigration and ethnic history. "
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/history/bi/famhist.html

Oral History Sites

These sites offer examples of oral histories, in either audio or written format, that you may use as models of this process as you work through your own project.

Alice Caudle, Mill Worker. Sample oral history excerpt. How many themes can you identify? Which one(s) would you like to explore?
African - American Oral Histories: Verbal Self Portraits
"Packer Collegiate Institute's African- American Literature class worked with the Advanced photography class to produce a portfolio of portraits and oral histories. "
http://www.packer.edu/Access/Internal/Students/AbFo/TRIAL.html
American Life Histories
Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html
Center for Digital Storytelling
"The Center for Digital Storytelling is the artistic and administrative home to Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen. We are a husband and wife team working with a large number of community collaborators, and our mission is to assist people in using digital me dia to tell meaningful stories from their lives, with source material generated from their personal image archives."
http://www.storycenter.org/
We Made Do-- Recalling the Great Depression
""We Made Do" is on-going project of the students in Mooresville High School in Mooresville, Indiana. The project's focus is on the 1930's, the era of the Great Depression. It contains oral histories, period photographs and e-mailed contributions of v iewers who have taken time to share their memories of living in this period of economic upheaval. This page is dedicated to that generation who were forged on the anvil of the Great Depression and then tempered and toughened by the bellows wind of World W ar II... an era that produced a remarkable group of humankind."
http://www.mcsc.k12.in.us/mhs/social/madedo/