SAA Oral History Project

Summary

The SAA Oral History Project was an initiative led and conducted by the OHS Steering Committees of 2008 - 2012, with follow-up grant work and processing overseen by subsequent OHS Steering Committees through 2016 in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries.   Over the course of five years (2009-2014), 23 interviews were conducted. As of 2018, 19 of those interviews are transcribed and available online.  

Background

For a more detailed story about the project, please read our FAQs.

The project was envisioned in 2008 as a revival of the oral history project conducted by SAA OHS leaders in the 1990s.  In anticipation of SAA’s 75th Anniversary, which was celebrated in 2011, OHS Steering Committee members in 2008-2009 collaborated with SAA’s 75th Anniversary Task Force to organize a full interviewing project.  The project was featured as one of several anniversary highlights, and led to the OHS producing five years’ worth of SAA leader interviews.  The interviews, with a few exceptions, were video interviews conducted onsite at annual meetings 2010-2014.  

All interviews have been deposited to the SAA Archives, have been described as part of the Oral History Series of the SAA Archives Finding Aid, and unless otherwise noted in release forms, are open to the public.  Please contact the Special Collections Department at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries for more information about the SAA Archives.  

With funding sought from the SAA Component Groups Funding Grants, in 2016 a majority of the interviews (19 out of 23) were processed into a digital collection, published online as part of the UWM-Libraries Digital Collections.