Oral history projects come in all shapes and sizes. They are conducted by big institutions such as universities and libraries through to local community groups and individual practitioners. The outputs of oral history projects are equally diverse – from online oral history interview collections to websites, multimedia presentations and documentaries to podcasts and geo-locative storytelling.
The big change in recent years is that it has become much easier to view excerpts and whole interviews online.
Telling oral history stories
Technology has opened up new ways to tell oral history stories. Here are a few examples.
Interactive
Digital book
Performance
Animation
Geo-locative
Access oral history projects & collections
This is not an exhaustive list, but provides a useful sample of projects available.
International
The projects here are selected for their broad scope and/or innovation.
USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive – video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide
Densho – oral histories of Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII
Oral History in the Digital Age – resources for oral historians working with digital technologies
Mass Observation Archive – recording everyday life in Britain
Australia – national
These projects are deemed national because of their scope and/or location in a national archive.
Australian Generations Oral History Project
Bringing Them Home Oral History Project
Australia – local
This is a sampling of projects related to a specific issue or community in Australia.
Location-based
The Street – Brisbane’s Westend
Community-based
Greek Migration Experience Project
Parliament of Western Australia Oral History Program
Documentary