Oral Historians
About the people who DO oral history. News and items of note.
At the Oral History Association Conference in Pittsburgh
Hello from Pittsburgh. I’m here for the Oral History Association annual meeting (conference). The theme: Oral History in the Digital Age. Today is the “workshops” day, with in-depth instruction on a number of topics.
Intro to Oral History interviewing (Oral History for newbies), Two part workshop on field recording—digital audio and digital video (I’m attending the digital video workshop). Oral History and the Law (agreements with interviewees, and how do you construct them to make an interview available to an archive or institution in perpetuity for the long-term?), digital preservation, “transforming the transcript” and a hands-on workshop for working with digitized audio and video using a particular software setup.
I’ll give a report about... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Do it: Learn How
• Oral Historians
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Happy Birthday, Studs Terkel. In his honor: Tell stories!!!
Studs Terkel is 96. In his honor, today’s been declared the International Day of Telling Life Stories.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Digital Storytelling
• Oral Historians
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Oral History’s Dirty Little Secret
Stud Terkel’s People. Harry Maurer, author of Not working
After finishing Not Working, Studs Terkel invites Maurer onto his radio show.
Soon there we were, across a table in the WFMT studio, the celebrated author of Working
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Oral Historians
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Yearning and Family History (from the Oral History Assn conference)
“Yearning,” she called it. Yearning. Her word leapt at me with all the force of being the right, true, word describing what’s within me. Her story: An experienced oral history interviewer visits a distant family member and is very quickly drawn into a story of trauma, of holocaust, of fractured families. The Q & A brought forth uncanny connections between her story, and other stories of fracturing, family, holocaust and slavery.
The panel at the Oral History Association conference in Oakland was called Community and Individual Memory. One presentation, about how the City of Fremont celebrated its 50th anniversary, is worth its own short post. This post is about a presentation by Rina Benmayor, on yearning and family interviewing.
Benmayor is one of the founders and directors of the CSUMB Oral History and Community Memory Institute and Archive. She’s an experienced oral history interviewer. In her presentation, she describes how, after... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Interviewing
• Oral Historians
• Personal History
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Back from the Oakland Conference
I’m back from the Oakland Oral History Association conference, and overwhelmed with catch-up-to-do. There were too many good panels to attend. Some that touched on the topic of interviewing family, and others on dealing with digital media. I took copious notes (how else do you remember what happened in such a condensed, info-packed place?) and will be offering a couple of posts with session highlights.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Housekeeping
• Oral Historians
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Southwest Oral History Association Annual Meeting
I’ll be attending the Annual Meeting of
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Oral Historians
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Willa Baum, 1926-2006
An obituary for Oral Historian Willa Baum, written by her son, Brandon. “Her pioneering work in oral history methodology and interview techniques served asjavascript:void(0); the foundation for the establishment and growth of oral history as a unique academic discipline.” She’s the author of two books on Oral history, and Co-editor of an anthology.
Willa loved being involved in oral history, not only because the work was important, but because it allowed her to meet people of the highest caliber and interview them about the events and issues they felt most passionately about.
Through her interviews at ROHO, Willa got to know Earl Warren, Golda Meir, and Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, David Brower and many others. She prided herself on being clever enough to hire a group of top notch women interviewers, each an... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Oral history in the news
• Oral Historians
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