The Oral History Section of the Society of American Archivists is composed of members of the Society and others who are interested in or are actively engaged in conducting oral history interviews and/or teach oral history methodology. The Oral History Section provides a forum for news, for discussion of issues and developments, and for establishing and maintaining communication and cooperation with other professional organizations.
News & Announcements
The National Education Association (NEA) and the libraries of the George Washington University (GWU) formed a partnership in 2008 to process and house the Association’s archives and library at the Gelman Library within the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC). Following the official opening of the archives in 2011, it quickly became the collection most utilized by SCRC researchers. Between January and May of 2017, I conducted four oral histories with former NEA staffers.
In 2017, the staff of the Billy Graham Center Archives at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois transcribed over 38 hours of oral history interviews, filling 646 pages. Most of these transcripts have been put online. Among the topics covered in the interviews are holistic social and evangelistic outreach in Mississippi, student ministry in the Philippines, educational work in Lebanon, Protestant missions in China, Kenya, the Belgian Congo, Colombia, Tibet, and India; and the history of Christian radio.
Agenda and information regarding the Oral History Section Session at SAA 2017 Annual Meeting -- Portland, Oregon, July 26, 4-5:15, Room A105
OHS Chair-Elect Amanda Pellerin
With more than one hundred years’ worth of history to process and preserve, the University Archives (established 2006) at Texas State University has accomplished much in its eleven years of operation. One of the Archives’ most recent projects focuses on digitizing its oral history collections. Consisting of over two hundred interviews that span topics from alumnus President Lyndon B. Johnson to Texans’ roles in the early days of NASA, many of these oral histories had remained untouched since their creation ten, fifteen, and even thirty years ago.
Following the 2016 election, Denver, Colorado has experienced a new wave of grassroots, activist activity. Citizens who had previously not interacted with the state are taking new measures to speak to their local and national governments, often en masse, in marches and rallies with attendance in the hundreds to tens of thousands. Given this new, and likely impermanent trend in Denver and nationwide, the Documenting Denver Activism Archives Project will be undertaking a case study in order to create a new methodology specific to documenting protests as they occur through a new method called ‘guerrilla oral history.’
