Library Guides: High School Ethnic Studies Initiative Library Guide: Oral Histories

The Library is a Haven by Erik Ruin, May 2023

Oral Histories

Oral histories are a critical way of documenting the history of communities that are left out or misrepresented in the historical record. Oral history interviews with family members or community members can also be a way to explore our intergenerational and interpersonal connections to the larger histories and policies that shape our lives. Below are resources that can help you design oral history projects as well as examples of oral history collections.

How to Do Oral History

UC Irvine Oral History Toolkit
Designed with community archives in mind, this toolkit contains six modules that take you through the steps of preparing, conducting, and preserving oral history interviews.
Smithsonian Guide to Oral History
Oral history is a technique for generating and preserving original, historically interesting information – primary source material – from personal recollections through planned recorded interviews. Below are suggestions for anyone looking to start recording oral histories based on best practices used in the Smithsonian Oral History Program at the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Example Oral History Collections

Warrior Women Project
The Warrior Women Project combines oral history, contemporary media, and transformative scholarship to bridge the divide between frontline communities, the Ivory Tower of academia, and the mainstream media machine. From Alcatraz, to Wounded Knee, to uranium mines, and the fight against pipelines on sovereign Treaty land, these histories are compelling, they are complex, and they are urgent. Our collective liberation cannot be determined by the gatekeeping of history.
The Stonewall Oral History Project
Over 80 oral histories were conducted from 2018-2019 through the National Park Service’s Stonewall Oral History Project, in partnership with The Center and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Hear from community members, activists, West Village residents and more about their personal experiences related to the Stonewall Riots, as well as organizing before and after the events.
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
Filmed oral histories with Japanese Americans who experienced incarceration during World War II.
SNCC Legacy Project
The Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee Legacy Project preserves the history of SNCC. The website contains resources and reflections from those who were a part of SNCC as well as dozens of oral histories.

Secondary menu

High School Ethnic Studies Initiative Library Guide

Oral Histories

How to Do Oral History

Example Oral History Collections