Research Guides: History: Oral History

What is Oral History?

"Memory is the core of oral history, from which meaning can be extracted and preserved. Simply put, oral history collects memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews."

Ritchie, D. A. (2003). Doing Oral History (Vol. 2nd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Things to consider before getting started:

Who are you going to interview?
What questions are you going to ask?
How are you going to organize your information?
What will you use to record the interview?
How will you store the interview once it is completed?
What are you going to do with the interview?

Creating Oral Histories

Curating Oral Histories: From Interview to Archive

The Voice of the Past

Doing Oral History

Recording Oral History

Featured Oral Histories

Rikers: An Oral History

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II

Black. Queer. Southern. Women.: An Oral History

I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us: An Oral History of the Attacks Against the Students of Ayotzinapa

Songs My Mother Sang To Me: An Oral History of Mexican American Women

Punk Rock: An Oral History by John Robb

Digital Omnium: Survey of Oral History Podcasts
This is a collection of podcasts that incorporate oral history interviews into their productions.
Oral History Association
Official website of the Oral History Association
Oral History Research Starter
This is the oral history research starter available through South Texas College.
The Oral History Review Blog
This is the Oral History Review journal's blog. The posts cover a range of topics dealing with oral history in various fields.

FamilySearch #52Stories Project
Lists of genealogy-related questions that you can ask individuals and families
The National WWII Museum
Offers advice on how to conduct oral history interviews with World War II veterans
Re-Imagining Migration
A list of questions you can ask about the immigrant experience
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
A list of interview questions to learn about family history and folklore

Oral History Collections

Angel Island Immigrant Voices
A growing archive of personal stories of immigrants to the Pacific Coast from Angel Island Immigration Station detainees to those arriving today.
Bracero History Archive
The Bracero History Archive collects and makes available the oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. Millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program to work in more than half of the states in America.
Ellis Island Oral Histories
The Ellis Island Oral History Project saved these individual stories for historians to study and for all of us to learn from and enjoy. National Park Service staff and volunteers recorded, then painstakingly transcribed, these interviews.
Goin' North
Captured in oral history interviews conducted in the 1980s with aging Philadelphians who participated in and witnessed the Great Migration firsthand, these stories tell of both individual lives and collective experiences adapting to a new home in the "City of Brotherly Love."
Italian-American Immigrant Oral History Catalog
During the period between 1982 and 1985, the Center for Oral History at Northern Michigan University (defunct), with the assistance of financial grants of money from the Paisano Club of Upper Michigan, Northern Michigan University, and the Michigan Council for the Humanities sponsored a project dealing with Italian immigration into Upper Michigan, also known as the Upper Peninsula.
Minnesota Immigrant Oral Histories
Immigrant Oral Histories presents a collection of over 360 oral history interviews conducted between 1967 and 2012 with recent immigrants to Minnesota and their American-born children, including both streaming audio and written transcripts accessible online in digital formats.

Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) and Chicago Japanese American Historical Society (CJAHS) Oral History Project Collection
The majority of these interviews focus on both pre-war life, wartime incarceration, and postwar resettlement to Chicago and the Midwest.
The Oral History Project of the Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive
The mission of the OHP is to create and preserve a more complete record of the wars in Southeast Asia by preserving, through recorded interviews, the recollections and experiences of all who were involved in those wars. There is no political agenda in the development of the archive or the Oral History Project. Anyone can participate, whether an American veteran, a former ally or enemy of the U.S., an anti-war protester, a government employee, a family member of a veteran, etc.
Veterans History Project
A Library of Congress list of existing oral history sites dedicated to the various branches of armed forces
VOCES Oral History Project at UT-Austin
This project began in 1999, with a mission of capturing untold stories of Latinos and Latinas who served, in the military or on the home front, during World War II. Our archive has expanded to include the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and Political and Civic Engagement, focusing on the continuing fight for Latino civil rights.

Los del Valle
Oral history project supported by the University of Texas at Brownsville. This site contains interviews, photographs, film clips and music that highlight the unique history and culture of the Rio Grande Valley.
Oral Histories of Texas Rangers
These oral histories are a joint educational and preservation program of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum and the Texas Ranger Association Foundation. We thank the many Texas Rangers who have taken the time to share their lives of service and experiences with posterity.
Tejano Voices
This site is maintained by the University of Texas at Arlington. It provides access to recorded interviews from Tejanos and Tejanas discussing their struggles against racism in post World War II Texas.

Behind the Veil
A selection of recorded oral history interviews chronicling African-American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s.
LGBTQ History Digital Collaboratory
LGBTQ digital oral history is an emerging field built by dedicated activists, historians, and archivists across the web. This hub acts as a growing resource for oral histories practitioners and the public.
Samuel Proctor Oral History Program Digital Collection
With over 8,000 interviews, of which over 3.600 are online, the SPOHP collection is one of the largest oral history archives in the South and one of the top collections in the country. The largest collection contains more than 900 interviews with Native Americans including Seminoles, Cherokees, and Creeks.
Survivors of Genocide
From May 2015 through October 2016, the Baylor University Institute for Oral History conducted fourteen oral histories with survivors of the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda/Burundi, Bosnia, and Darfur. This work was contracted through a grant from the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission in order for survivors who now live in Texas to tell their stories of escaping the horrors of their homelands and finding a new life in the United States.