Oral History and Documentary HistoryApplications in Library and Information Science

Marija Dalbello

Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyNew Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

dalbello@scils.rutgers.eduwww.scils.rutgers.edu/~dalbello

Introduction content creation in DL context (memory institutions) memory institutions shape the historical record

documentary history (artefacts, documents) traditionally considered basis for forming historical memory

oral history (eyewitness accounts: recorded, transcribed) alternative method of generating documents about historical experience

oral collection of historical material: history, theory, methodology, “how to”

current applications and trends projects using digital library technology and oral history methods to

explore new ways of collecting and highlighting existing collections tools for DL development

Outline

Oral History and Historical Research

Doing Oral History

Historical Concepts in Digital Library Settings (Oral History Projects)

DL Tools & Technology Infrastructure

“He lived a useful life.”

An inscription from a late 18th century tombstone inside a church in lower Manhattan. Similar sentiments do not grace Victorian gravestones. These “remember” the deceased with “love.”

Oral History:The Story of Lived Experience

purpose

Oral history illuminates the experience and historical contribution of ordinary people

Oral history provides insights into everyday life experience

Oral history is a way to reach groups and individuals who have been ignored, oppressed, and/or forgotten

Oral history captures personal accounts (autobiographical, life stories)

Oral History Research tradition

(1934/1966) Lomax & Lomax (ballads and folk songs)

(1948) Oral History Project (Allan Nevins, Columbia U)

(1975) Studs Terkel: Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

(1980s) Feminist studies of the social / personal meanings of women, their work, experience, life

Oral History is art, science, and craft

definition A qualitative research process based on personal

interviewing, suited to understand meanings, interpretations, relationships, and subjective experience

and A product: an audio or video tape recording, that

is an original historical document, a new primary source for further research

(Source: “Oral History Workshop on the Web” (http://www3.baylor.edu/Oral history/Whatis.htm)

Historiography Oral History

Documentary History conventional written historical narratives

reconstruction and interpretation; completeness focus on written documents, artefacts

Oral History oral traditions and other personal narratives capturing “the structure of feeling” of everyday life (Williams 1977)

broad-based information & large-scale projects within meaningful historical framework

interviews with eyewitnesses of events areas of application diverse: academic, government,

libraries, museums, medical and military settings sharing information with the larger community

(publications and programs)

Historiography Oral History

Structuralist approach: assumptions of an era (an époque) are inscribed and embedded in (documentary or lived) texts, as parts of webs or systems of signification. Any particular text can be analyzed in relationship to other texts, as a structure of meaning.

Cultural theory interpreting practices as representations of social relationships.

Postmodernist theories see both written documents and mundane activities as ‘texts.’

Oral History as Text oral traditions, memory & history

Oral traditionanonymous, functionally modified for memory as channel of transmission (mnemonic, homeostatic, performative, not reliable)

Vansina (1961) Ong (1982)

Public Memoryimpacted by processes of cultural and social memory; memory shaped by personal interest and public institutional contexts (heritage not history)

Lowenthal (1998) Fentress & Wickham (1991) Passerini (1987; 1992; 1997)

Oral History limitations as method of access to the past

Personal or public history?

Are we collecting or crafting collective memory?

We are discovering voices and empowering them, but...

Who speaks for history?

From whom do we want to hear?

Why do we want to hear them?

We are collecting memory and placing the voices historically but ...

Whose voices do we want to privilege?

Are we discovering or creating memory?

Oral History Research dilemmas

How reliable is oral history?

What can we learn form oral history that cannot be found in written historical documents? How does the oral, retrospective character of oral narratives influence their content?

Do interviews consist of records of what actually happened in the past? Or are they shaped memories of the individuals who narrate them?

How does the presence of an interviewer influence the final product? 

Can oral history help democratize the reconstruction of history?

What is the role of libraries in maintaining that record of the past?

Oral History Project Doing Oral History: Planning & Project Management

discovering voices collecting memories situating & recovering voices crafting collective memory

Exercise 1: Project planning

Oral History Project Doing Oral History: Planning & Project Management

Stage 1: identify general subject Stage 2: justify why recovering particular voices Stage 3: plan for funding & organizational support Stage 4: identify context for dissemination; project

evaluation (ethical, legal concerns)

before you start: 20 questions checklist after you start: 5 strategies (advisory board, goals

& priorities, project guidelines, staff, budget )

Oral History Project Doing Oral History: Interview

unstructured interview techniques; consideration of legal issues; project management

Veterans History Project (Library of Congress). "Project Kit: Interviewing and Recording Guidelines” (http://www.loc.gov/folklife/vets/guidelines.html)

“Oral History Workshop” (Baylor University. Institute for Oral History) (http://www3.baylor.edu/Oral _History/Workshop.htm)

Oral History Interview

Oral History Project Doing Oral History: Interview

unstructured interview / field techniques:

introductory announcement; prepare questions before the interview (write them down)

open ended questions; short; don’t begin with painful topics; follow-up questions

give interviewee time for reflection ask interviewee to show you photographs, personal

letters as a way of enhancing the interview (encourages memory and provokes interesting stories)

bodily cues rather than verbal

Oral History Project Doing Oral History: Interview

legal and ethical considerations: never record secretly be yourself: don’t pretend you know more about a subject

than the participant prepare release forms

recording & technology specifications: 90 minute per subject tape or video; self-standing microphone; standard speed

only; test equipment beforehand; quiet setting focus on face, upper body when recording

Oral History Project Doing Oral History: Interview

Sample Interview Questions (V / Civilians): Segments of the interview

Civilians: For the Record, Jogging Memory, Wartime Work, Life During Wartime, Postwar Experiences, Closing Questions

Veterans: For the Record, Jogging Memory, Experiences, Life, After Service, Later Years and Closing

Use questions but let participant tell his/her own story

Biographical Data Form in advance Prepare yourself

Oral History Project Doing Oral History: Post-Interview

Evaluation Oral History Association, “Oral History Evaluation

Guidelines,” Pamphlet No. 3 (1989; rev. 2000) (http://www.dickinson.edu/organizations/oha/EvaluationGuidelines.html)

Transcription, Editing, Historical Presentation, Publication

Veterans History Project (Library of Congress). "Project Kit: Transcribing and Indexing Your Interviews" (http://www.loc.gov/folklife/vets/transcribe.html)

Oral History (DL) The “Living Library”: Examples

memory institutions actively engaged in re-conceptualizing historical narrative (public libraries, museums, archives)

“the living library”: engaging community memory with existing collections

preservation of local knowledge, record of everyday experience, “knowledge management” in the local environment

Oral History (DL) The “Living Library”: Examples

“Bridgeport Working: Voices from the 20th Century” (Bridgeport Public Library)

New Deal Projects (Library of Congress) “American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal

Writers’ Projects, 1936-1942” “African Voices” (Smithsonian Institution) “Benedicte Wrensted: An Idaho Photographer in Focus”

(Idaho Museum of Natural History) “Talking History: Labor History Archive” (The University

at Albany. State University of New York) “Bioscience and Biotechnology in History” (UC Berkeley

Bancroft Library. Regional Oral History Office; Open Archives California)

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940

(http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html)

The Federal Writers' Project materials in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division are part of a larger collection titled The U.S. Work Progress Administration Federal Writers' Project and Historical Records Survey. The holdings from the Federal Writers' Project span the years 1889-1942 and cover a wide range of topics and subprojects. Altogether, the Federal Writers' holdings number approximately 300,000 items and consist of correspondence, memoranda, field reports, notes, graphs, charts, preliminary and corrected drafts of essays, oral testimony, folklore, miscellaneous administrative and miscellaneous other material. The American Memory collection presented here is a coherent portion of the larger Federal Writers' series. It includes the life histories and corollary documents assembled by the Folklore Project with the Federal Writers' effort.

"No one would be interested in my life."     That was often the response when the Historical Collections staff asked local residents if we could ask them about their work experiences in Bridgeport. "I didn't have an important job," they frequently added. Somewhat reluctantly, they finally agreed to be interviewed. Later, as the tape recorder clicked off, the person being interviewed was just getting warmed up. Fascinating stories about living in Bridgeport flowed like the waters of the Pequonnock River. Included were details of an ordinary person's daily life that gave insight into the past decades, moments that were hard to visualize for any newcomer to the City.     What was it like to work and live in Bridgeport, Connecticut during the past century? Who else could tell us but people who worked on the line in the factories; sold goods behind the counter at a department store; taught children in the local schools; ran a travel agency, worked as a housewife, drove a truck, or ran one of the many other prosperous businesses that helped Bridgeport grow and develop.     We thank the people who we interviewed for sharing their life stories. You are not only interesting; your lives are remarkable. We are happy to share your remarkable stories with many generations to come. Who else could tell us what it was like to work in Bridgeport, Connecticut during the 20th Century?

Idaho Museum of Natural HistoryBenedicte Wrensted: An Idaho Photographer in Focus

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/wrensted

One of the goals of this exhibition has been to demonstrate the ways in which photographs, even those a century old, can be placed in historical context. Only 1% of the Wrensted images at the NARA were identified at the onset of the project. Once they were shown to the descendants at the Fort Hall Indian Reservation , the families of origin were discovered. Individual names were recovered from written records, and today 84% of Wrensted subjects have been identified. Many of the photographs in this exhibit are modern enlargements from copy negatives made from the best possible prints, which were in turn made from the original dry-plate glass negatives. A few of the reproductions are made from vintage prints.

Oral History (DL) The “Living Library”: Examples

current approaches

shared historical artefacts (x-generational) genealogy databases as community resource shared storytelling tapping into resources of oral culture to create an

interactive archive with historical documents preserving local knowledge (video) preserving knowledge in ‘communities of practice’

DL Tools examples

Library + Archival community standards metadata

Engineering community tools: technology + conceptual; infrastructure for presentation

‘digital storytelling’ supporting access to large digital oral history

archives community databases technologies supporting collaborative work, online

communities, local sharing multimedia organization & tools for presentation

Conclusion as they engage oral history in their collections

memory institutions become active participants in shaping historical record

acting upon representations offering plurivocality for existing collections ‘hybrid’ library

“Tapping into knowledge bases of local subjects and the

neighborhoods in which they are produced is central to empowerment

and knowledge to reproduce locality is rooted in such dynamic contact

of people and technology in the global context. Digital libraries should

become a site and agency for such knowledge production processes.”

(Dalbello, in print 2003)