Oral History and Documentary History Applications in Library and Information Science

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Oral History and Documentary HistoryApplications
in Library and Information Science

• Marija Dalbello

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New
Brunswick, New Jersey, USA dalbello_at_scils.rut
gers.edu www.scils.rutgers.edu/dalbello
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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

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Outline

• Oral History and Historical Research
• Doing Oral History
• Historical Concepts in Digital Library Settings
  (Oral History Projects)
• DL Tools Technology Infrastructure

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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.
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Oral HistoryThe 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)

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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

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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)

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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)

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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.

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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 Memory
• impacted 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)

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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?

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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?

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Oral History Project Doing Oral History
Planning Project Management

• discovering voices
• collecting memories
• situating recovering voices
• crafting collective memory
• Exercise 1 Project planning

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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 )

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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/guid
  elines.html)
• Oral History Workshop (Baylor University.
  Institute for Oral History) (http//www3.baylor.ed
  u/Oral _History/Workshop.htm)

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Oral History Interview

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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 dont 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

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Oral History Project Doing Oral History
Interview

• legal and ethical considerations
• never record secretly
• be yourself dont 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

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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

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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/tran
  scribe.html)

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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

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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)

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American Life Histories Manuscripts from the
Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
(http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.ht
ml) 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.
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"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?
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Idaho Museum of Natural History Benedicte
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.
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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

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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

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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)