Oral History Projects
The generation that remembers is dying. Record their stories before they're gone forever.
Pressure addressed: cultural, psychological
Time: Ongoing collection and preservation
People: 2-5 trained interviewers, community elders
Resources: Recording equipment, storage, trained interviewers
About this tool
Your grandmother remembers what the neighbourhood looked like before. Your uncle knows the history they don't teach in schools. The elder at the mosque was there when it happened. They won't be here forever.
How to do it
Identify knowledge holders
Who holds the stories? Elders, longtime residents, community leaders. Prioritise those with unique knowledge and those most at risk of being lost.
Train interviewers
Oral history has methodology. Learn to ask open questions, to follow threads, to create space for stories to emerge.
Conduct interviews
Record with consent. Create comfortable environments. Let people tell their stories in their own way.
Preserve securely
Multiple backups. Multiple locations. Format migration as technology changes. Plan for the long term.
Use actively
Education programmes. Community events. Advocacy materials. Archives that aren't used become forgotten.
Before you start
- Recording equipment
- Community trust
- Storage capacity
Implementation guidance
Starting point
- Systematic identification of knowledge holders by priority
- Trained interviewers using established methodology
- Professional-quality recording with backup equipment
- Multiple backup locations including off-site/cloud
- Transcription and indexing for searchability
- Active use in education and advocacy
- Ongoing collection as new stories emerge
Building on it
- Key elders identified and some recorded
- Basic recording quality
- At least one backup location
- Some community access to recordings
Advanced practice
- Sporadic recording without system
- Single location storage
- No transcription or indexing
- Recordings sitting unused
Oral histories recorded without proper methodology miss crucial context and follow-up questions. Single-location storage means one fire, one raid, one hard drive failure destroys irreplaceable memories. Oral histories that sit in archives unused don't serve the communities they came from.
Examples
StoryCorps
US-based oral history project that has recorded 600,000+ conversations
Largest single collection of human voices ever gathered, archived at Library of Congress
Source