Diverse Personnel in Libraries
Diversity
Identity
Interviewees
Interviewing
Life History
Memory
Mentoring
Oral Historians: Tasks and Roles
Oral History
Oral History: Definitions
Shared Authority
Spectrum Initiative
Storytelling
Trauma
Validity
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- “The oral historian does not merely transcribe speech but uncovers and engages the various dialogues within the testimony.” i
- “Oral historians have a unique, personal relationship with the men and women whose life stories provide their source material.” ii
- “Power [in field research] is discernible in three interrelated dimensions: (1) power differences stemming from different positionalities of the researcher and the researched (race, class, nationality, life chances, urban-rural backgrounds); (2) power exerted during the research process, such as defining the research relationships, unequal exchange, and exploitation; and (3) power exerted during the postfieldwork period—writing and representing.” iii
- “As Valerie Yow has emphasized, oral historians need to be self-reflective and self-critical, and to think carefully about how our own background affects which questions are not being asked and why they are not being asked.” iv
- “As interviewers we become involved in the creation of a life story and can ourselves become affected by that interaction.” v
- “As interviewers we must consider our own motivations and needs, as well as those of the narrator, when undertaking an oral history project, and especially if it is a biographical product.” vi
- “As all oral historians know, we are all co-creators of the oral history we participate in, even if simply by our presence.” vii
- “The essential art of the oral historian is the art of listening.” viii
- “Good interviewers always make information on themselves available on demand in exchange for the information they gather.” ix
i Nutkiewicz, 3.
ii Thomson, Alistair, Sharing Authority: Oral History and the Collaborative
Process,” The Oral History Review 30 (1) (Winter/Spring 2003), 23.
iii Wolf, Diane L., “Situating Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork,”
in Wolf, ed., Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork (Boulder: Westview Press,
Inc., 1996), pp. 1-55.
iv Yow, Valerie, “Ethics and Interpersonal Relationships in Oral
History Research,” OH Review 22:1 (1995): 51-66 In Sitzia, Lorraine,
“A Shared Authority: An Impossible Goal?” The Oral History
Review 30 (1) (Winter/Spring 2003), 96.
v Thomson, Alistair, “Memory as a Battlefield: Personal and Political
Investments in the National Military Past,” The Oral History Review
22:2 (1995): 55-57
vi Sitzia, Lorraine, “A Shared Authority:
An Impossible Goal?” The Oral History Review 30 (1) (Winter/Spring
2003), 96.
vii Wolford, John B., Book review of Boyer, Sarah, comp. In Our Own
Words: Stories of North Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990-1960. Cambridge:
City of Cambridge Massachusetts, 1997; Boyer, Sarah, comp. Crossroads:
Stories of Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1912-2000. Cambridge:
Cambridge Historical Commission, In The Oral History Review 30 (1) (Winter/Spring
2003), 123.
viii Portelli, Alessandro (The Battle of Valle Guilia: Oral History and
the Art of Dialogue. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997),
6`.
ix Portelli, Alessandro (The Battle of Valle Guilia: Oral History and
the Art of Dialogue. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997),
74.
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