What Are Primary Sources?
Primary sources are those created by a person who participated in, or directly observed an event. Primary sources might include interviews with a labor organizer, or newspaper accounts reporting about an event which happened. News reporting about recent events (current news) may often be a primary source.
- Chicano Movement Oral Histories at U of WCollection of oral history interviews conducted at the University of Washington. Contains links to interviews and information about interview subjects.
- Northwest District (LCMS) Yakima Valley Hispanic MinistryRecords of the Yakima Valley Hispanic Lutheran Ministry committee of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
- Irwin Nash Oral HistoryOral history interview with Irwin Nash, a Seattle photographer who worked to document the life of migrant farm workers in the Yakima Valley in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Irwin Nash PhotographsPhotographs taken by Irwin Nash in the 1960s and 1970s documenting the life of migrant farm workers in the Yakima Valley in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Seattle Human Services Department RecordsRecords of this Seattle municipal agency include those pertaining to immigrants and persons experiencing immigration issues in the city of Seattle.
Working with Oral History
Oral history can be an effective way to obtain primary resource material about your subject. Interviewing a person who has experienced the events you are researching can give you added perspective on the event. There are ethical and technical issues which have to be addressed when you conduct oral history interviews. One of the most important is to obtain permission to record and transcribe the interview, and to use information from it. It is best to obtain the permission from the interview subject before you conduct the interview, and to obtain a release from the person(s) before you record them. The materials listed below may be helpful for background. We are adding a copy of the Oral History Interview release form used by the EWU Archives as an example of one possible release from you might use for your project.
Equipment for Recording Oral History. The Media Service Desk on the lower floor of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library has a limited amount of equipment available for student check out. This includes about 4 or 5 digital voice recorders, and approximately 30 video camcorders. You will need to have your student technology fee paid to be allowed to check this equipment out. For more information on available equipment, go to: https://www.ewu.edu/library/equipment-checkout/
- How to Do Oral History -- Smithsonian InstituteThis webpage provides several lists useful for conduct an oral history. They cover the basic steps for conducting an oral history, best practices for recording and transcription, and advice for asking questions that will provide helpful responses.
- Digital OmniumThis is an excellent site for background material on oral history. Includes information on how to develop an oral history program, legal issues, and the technology for recording and transcribing interviews.
Oral History by ISBN: 0761991883Publication Date: 1996-09-26Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology is a collection of classic articles by some of the best known proponents of oral history, demonstrating the basics of oral history, while also acting as a guidebook for how to use it in research. Added to this new edition is insight into how oral history is practiced on an international scale, making this book an indispensable resource for scholars of history and social sciences, as well as those interested in oral history on the avocational level. This volume is a reprint of the 1984 edition, with the added bonus of a new introduction by David Dunaway and a new section on how oral history is practiced on an international scale. Selections from the original volume trace the origins of oral history in the United States, provide insights on methodology and interpretation, and review the various approaches to oral history used by folklorists, historians, anthropologists, and librarians, among others. Family and ethnic historians will find chapters addressing the applications of oral history in those fields.- Doing Oral History byISBN: 9780199329342Publication Date: 2014-10-01Doing Oral History is considered the premier guidebook to oral history, used by professional oral historians, public historians, archivists, and genealogists as a core text in college courses and throughout the public history community. Over the past decades, the development of digital audio and video recording technology has continued to alter the practice of oral history, making it even easier to produce quality recordings and to disseminate them on the Internet. This basic manual offers detailed advice on setting up an oral history project, conducting interviews, making video recordings, preserving oral history collections in archives and libraries, and teaching and presenting oral history. Using the existing Q&A format, the third edition asks new questions and augments previous answers with new material, particularly in these areas: 1. Technology: As before, the book avoids recommending specific equipment, but weighs the merits of the types of technology available for audio and video recording, transcription, preservation, and dissemination. Information about web sites is expanded, and more discussion is provided about how other oral history projects have posted their interviews online. 2. Teaching: The new edition addresses the use of oral history in online teaching. It also expands the discussion of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) with the latest information about compliance issues. 3. Presentation: Once interviews have been conducted, there are many opportunities for creative presentation. There is much new material available on innovative forms of presentation developed over the last decade, including interpretive dance and other public performances. 4. Legal considerations: The recent Boston College case, in which the courts have ruled that Irish police should have access to sealed oral history transcripts, has re-focused attention on the problems of protecting donor restrictions. The new edition offers case studies from the past decade. 5. Theory and Memory: As a beginner''s manual, Doing Oral History has not dealt extensively with theoretical issues, on the grounds that these emerge best from practice. But the third edition includes the latest thinking about memory and provides a sample of some of the theoretical issues surrounding oral sources. It will include examples of increased studies into catastrophe and trauma, and the special considerations these have generated for interviewers. 6. Internationalism: Perhaps the biggest development in the past decade has been the spreading of oral history around the world, facilitated in part by the International Oral History Association. New oral history projects have developed in areas that have undergone social and political upheavals, where the traditional archives reflect the old regimes, particularly in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The third edition includes many more references to non-U.S. projects that will still be relevant to an American audience. These changes make the third edition of Doing Oral History an even more useful tool for beginners, teachers, archivists, and all those oral history managers who have inherited older collections that must be converted to the latest technology.
Oral History by ISBN: 9780195395099Publication Date: 2011-02-24Oral History is part of the Understanding Qualitative Research series, which is designed to provide researchers with authoritative guides to understanding, presenting, and critiquing analyses and associated inferences. There are three subareas in this series: Quantitative Research, Measurement, and Qualitative Research. This volume fits in the Qualitative Research group and addresses issues surrounding oral history - how to both fully and succinctly report and present this material, as well as the challenges of evaluating it.
