MetaFilter posts tagged with oralhistory

1989, revolution in Eastern Europe

Kattullus — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:49:20 -0800

The BBC World Service has put together a special report on the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe (they also have a simpler portal). There is a wealth of material, including TV reports on key events from the BBC archives, interviews, a map timeline, a report on Catholicism's role in the 1989 revolutions, a first-hand report of what it was like to gather news in East Germany during that time and much more.

"The original Port Huron Statement . . . Not the compromised second draft."

IvoShandor — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:37:35 -0800

The Sixties Project - The Sixties Project began as a collective of humanities scholars working together on the Internet to use electronic resources to provide routes of collaboration and make available primary and secondary sources for researchers, students, teachers, writers and librarians interested in the Sixties. From The Sixties Project: *Special Exhibitions (incl. Sixties buttons and political posters) *Winter Soldier Investigation (wiki) *Articles (published in the Viet Nam Generation Journal, 1988-1996) *Fiction and personal narratives *Primary sources: incl - Port Huron Statement (wiki), and John Kerry's 1971 statement to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations *Other resources Other interesting Vietnam links: *Texas Tech University: The Vietnam Center and Archive (Oral History Project: Interviews, search (some material excluded because of copyright)) *University of South Florida: The Vietnam War: Oral Histories (videos) *Brown University: The Whole World Was Watching - An Oral History of 1968 *Rutgers University: Oral History interviews (site contains materials from other conflicts too) *Georgia Tech: Vietnam War Resources (this is a pretty astounding compilation) *Mount Holyoke College: Documents relating to American Foreign Policy in Vietnam *Los Angeles Times: Vietnam - The War Crime Files (wiki) *PBS: "Battlefield: Vietnam", American Experience: Vietnam Online (online companion to "Vietnam: A Television History") And a general 60s site called "The Psychedelic 60s" from the University of Virginia. There really are an abundance of great links on Vietnam and the 1960s, this is just a sampling of some that I enjoy.

Will observing the history of physics change it?

Horace Rumpole — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:44:49 -0800

The Niels Bohr Library & Archives has completed a project to transcribe its collection of more than 500 oral histories of physics, including a few audio snippets of the interviews. And, if you'd like to put a face with that voice, check out the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives. [via] A few highlights: Luis Alvarez Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Freeman Dyson George Gamow Werner Heisenberg Steven Weinberg

Archival Sound Recording Maps at the British Library

LarryC — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:44:52 -0800

Mapping sound at the British Library. The British Library has organized several of its archival sound collections on Google Maps. The results include Accents and Dialects, wildlife and soundscape recordings from Britain, music from India and Uganda, and a whole mess of noisy frogs. You can read more about the Archival Sound Recording Project here or on the project blog. This post comes via the JISC Digitisation blog.

The Other Eastenders

Abiezer — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:16:37 -0800

Kamal Chunchie charts the history of the black and Asian community in Canning Town, east London, in the 1920s and 1930s. It tells the story of the Coloured Men's Institute and its founder, Kamal Chunchie, a man who can rightly be called east London's first black and Asian community leader. One of the many excellent East London history projects at Hidden Histories.

Oral History of the Bush White House

CunningLinguist — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:10:13 -0800

Farewell to All That An illuminating and depressing Oral History of the Bush White House from Vanity Fair

Just People, Talking

Miko — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:09:32 -0800

The recent passing of Studs Terkel sparked a renewed interest in his interview projects, like Working, Race, and Hard Times. But Studs was not just a broadcaster who liked people; he was a practitioner of oral history, a method of gathering information about the past through preserving individual recollections. It's a subfield of history, with its own ethics, techniques, professional literature, uses, and limitations. Learn how to collect and share oral histories yourself, from interviewing to recording and getting clearances to preserving and disseminating. Oral histories have been preserved as text transcripts for decades; now digital media isreinvigorating the form, bringing new ease to recording and wider opportunities for the public to see and hear the content. Explore oral history projects on the web with stories of veterans, suffragists, Tibetans, jazz cats, Nevada nuclear test site witnesses, Basque Americans, rodeo cowboys and cowgirls, musicians, Katrina survivors, ACT UP activists, Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge, Native Americans, women whose lives were affected by the Pill, survivors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire,women in World War II, Hawai'ians, workers in Paterson, NJ....

Oral History of Black Leadership

Kattullus — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:52:25 -0800

Explorations in Black Leadership is a collection of video interviews with prominent African-Americans, focusing on activists of one sort or another. 34 people are interviewed, including Nikki Giovanni, John Lewis, Barbara Lee, Bobby Rush, Dorothy Height and Amiri Baraka. There are full transcripts of every interview. Here's an excerpt from the Nikki Giovanni interview: "The kids today have to have a voice. I'm amazed that they found it. I remember Sugarhill Gang with Sylvia, you know: "Uptown, Downtown, the Holiday Inn." You know, things like that. Then, of course, I remember the explosion of Tupac Shakur. Losing Tupac was a great loss for this generation. I have a tattoo--it says "Thug Life" --because I wanted to mourn with this generation. I don't see how people can knock the kids…paying so little attention. I had deep regrets--and I know Rosa Parks, you know, we don't hang out but I know her--I so regretted that she lent her name to be used against Outkast, because Rosa Parks is a wonderful--is a wonderful tune. And they were giving her problems. If people don't--if the younger generation doesn't sing the praises of the older generation they get forgotten."

What was it like during the Great Depression?

Kattullus — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:05:56 -0800

What was it like during the Great Depression? University of Oregon Economist Mark Thoma links to interviews by Studs Terkel which deal with the Great Depression. All interviews in Real Player format. Interviewees: Gardner C. Means, economic adviser to FDR. Peggy Terry, a migrant farm worker (my favorite interview). Virginia Durr, civil rights activist. Ed Paulsen, dayworker. Emma Tiller, cook. Pauline Kael (yes, that Pauline Kael). Mary Owsley, farm worker. Much more in the Hard Times section of the wonderful Studs Terkel website, which has been featured twice previously on MetaFilter (1, 2) [via Obsidian Wings]

In the First Person -- an index to letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives

cog_nate — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:01:54 -0800

In the First Person "is a free, high quality, professionally published, in-depth index of close to 4,000 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world. It lets you keyword search more than 700,000 pages of full-text by more than 18,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 4,300 audio and video files and 30,000 bibliographic records." (Description from website.) You can also browse by repository, collection, subject and several other ways.

Discuss, Decide and Do It

Abiezer — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:17:38 -0800

A Rage In Dalston [BBC Radio 4 documentary, 1hr, streaming RealMedia] "For four years after 1945, London and the South East witnessed vicious confrontations between the remnants of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists and Jewish ex-servicemen organised in the 43 Group." Interviewees include Vidal Sassoon, by day mild-mannered teenage hairdresser of talent, by night militant anti-fascist. Documentary maker Alan Dein was unable to get any surviving Moseleyites to talk for the programme but there's contributions from Trevor Grundy, author of Memoir of a Fascist Childhood.

A Greater Goggriffer than Cranky

tellurian — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 20:46:28 -0800

FARNE North East English folk archives. Interviews, performances, manuscripts, photos and videos. You can browse the archives a few different ways to get the feel of the place.

Story Corps

moonbird — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 19:36:02 -0800

Story Corps: friends reunited, friends parting, living history, thinking about the future.
[4 out of 80 stories, mp3s].

Mountain Voices

plep — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 12:10:47 -0800

Mountain Voices. 'This website presents interviews with over 300 people who live in mountain and highland regions round the world. Their testimonies offer a personal perspective on change and development.'

photographs of hiroshima

crush-onastick — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 15:02:40 -0800

The only photographs known to have been taken immediately after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The photographer's (Yoshito Matsushige) testimony from Hiroshima Witness, talking about taking the pictures. This article waxes on about how few exposures he made, how many he framed but did not take.

Gang Stories

jdroth — Sat, 06 Sep 2003 21:41:08 -0800

Gang Stories "The goal here is to tell some stories of what goes on behind the guns, drugs and crime in the headlines. These stories are the oral history of my old neighborhood. Figured it might do some good to write them."

History and culture of computing

carter — Sun, 22 Jun 2003 08:26:57 -0800

While there are a number of sites devoted to the history of computer and information technologies, their invention, design and manufacture is also a human story. So I'm glad that there are sites devoted to computing history and culture that also look at the lives of those involved. The Charles Babbage Institute and Center for the History of Information Technology, includes oral histories of engineers and 500 photographs of the Burroughs Corporation form the 1890s on. The Smithsonian Museum Division of Information Technology and Society is a gateway to a large number of 'real life' and online Smithsonian exhibitions related to the history of science and technology, including more oral histories and PDFs of the original DoD press releases for ENIAC. The Oxford University Virtual Museum of Computing includes tributes to information science pioneers, as well as much other stuff. Finally, the Silicon Valley Cultures Project is using anthropology to document the lives of many of those in the Valley.

BT — Thu, 28 Feb 2002 20:33:24 -0800

Old times there are not forgotten. From NPR: elderly white folks from Louisiana are asked to reminisce about life before the end of racial segregation. On the whole, they seem to have preferred it. Some insist that everyone was happier, and others simply claim that we should just move on. (Note that the last two links here are to brief Real Audio files.)