LibGuides: Oral History: Oral History

Oral History

Introduction

This guide will introduce you to basic concepts and resources for oral history.

What Is Oral History?

Oral history is a method that prioritizes oral culture and lived experience and decenters the written record as the authoritative source of knowledge

Consent

Consent is an important part of the oral history process. Consent should be an informed, accessible, and ongoing conversation with your participants. Consent should be tailored to what best fits your participants, whether this is a formal consent form that they sign, or a verbal agreement.

Tips for Preparing Interview Questions

Ask “open” questions that require more than a “yes” or “no” answer.
- Why, how, where, when…?
- Tell me about...
- Can you describe...
- Can you walk me through...
Keep it brief. Avoid questions that are actually commentary
Keep it focused. Try to ask only one thing per question
Avoid loaded and leading questions
- Instead of: Don’t you think that Sandtown a poor, hard place to grow up in?
- Try: Tell me how you felt about the place where you grew up
Build from broad, neutral questions to more specific, personal ones
Remember that questions are a guide, not a rigid list!
During the interview, follow up, ask for clarification, dig deeper!

Questions for Digging Deeper

Can you tell me more about that?
What happened after that?
Describe what that looked/felt/sounded like
How did that make you feel?
What did you learn from that?

What is TheirStory?

TheirStory

TheirStory is a proprietary, end-to-end platform for remote oral history interviewing. Unlike Zoom or other tools, it was created specifically for oral history. TheirStory allows you to schedule, record, and automatically transcribe oral history interviews. You can download your content off the platform and upload existing audio/video to use its features. As of 2024, TheirStory does not have video editing capabilities.

Supported Projects for TheirStory

Oral history projects that wish to use hosted hours on the TheirStory platform will be given priority in the following order:

Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) Projects
Courses in collaboration with CDS projects
Other projects conducting oral histories affiliated with the Brown Library
Digital humanities course projects and digital humanities projects led by individual faculty, undergraduate or graduate students
Other courses at Brown that incorporate an oral history project as part of the coursework
Non-digital humanities oral history projects led by faculty, undergraduate, or graduate students in other fields
(Least support) personal oral history projects
(Least support) other types of video/audio interviews that do not fall under the oral history method e.g. market research interviews

Please note that priority will be given to projects that plan to use the full features of the platform to carry out the entire oral history process from recording to transcribing.

How do I access TheirStory?

Please describe your project using this project proposal form so that the Digital Humanities Librarian can determine if your project is a good fit for TheirStory.

Please note that access to TheirStory is through a unique registration link provided by the Digital Humanities Librarian, and you will not be able to access the Brown Library's subscription to TheirStory directly from the TheirStory website.

Oral History Resources

Oral History Projects

Selected Oral History Projects

This page compiles information on tools for doing oral history and organizing oral history projects, as well as references to specific oral history interview collections available at the Brown University Library.

George Loane Tucker. Traffic in Souls. Film, 1913. Luna Collection.

Brown University Policies and Procedures Relating to Research Privacy
From the Office of the Provost, this page documents rules and procedures on research involving human subjects at Brown University.
Information on Children in Research
Information from Research at Brown on including children in research

Brown University Collections

Fox Point Project
"Since 2008, students from the Brown Center for Public Humanities have worked with Professor Anne Valk on collaborative projects to preserve and present the cultural heritage and social history of the Fox Point neighborhood. An archival collection of oral history interviews with current and past residents has formed the basis for websites, exhibits, and public projects. Approximately 75 interviews are archived at Brown’s library and are available for use by community members, scholars, students, and teachers."
Mashapaug Pond
"Mashapaug Pond and Reservoir Triangle Collection This collection contains oral history interviews, images, and research materials gathered by Brown University students. The project seeks to uncover personal stories related to the natural, social, and cultural history of Mashapaug Pond (Providence, RI) and the neighborhoods that surround it, using oral history and community arts,. Materials were collected initially as part of a fall 2011 class, AMST1903G, Oral History and Community Memory that was co-taught by Anne Valk and Holly Ewald. Other materials were added by students in subsequent courses and as part of independent projects."
Rock50 Oral History Collection
This collection contains oral history interviews with longtime members of the Brown University Library staff, in celebration of the Rockefeller’s Library’s fiftieth anniversary in 2014. The interviews were conducted by Brown librarians Carina Cournoyer and Karen Bouchard. Staff members represent a variety of jobs within the library and topics covered include library spaces, professional dress, impressions of the Rock as a building, technology changes over the years, the changing role of libraries and library staff, and amusing or interesting memories of working in the library.
Brown Women Speak: Archival Material
"Initiated by the Pembroke Center Associates in 1982, these oral histories record the experiences of the women of Brown University and Pembroke College." Includes materials maintained in Brown University Archives.
Brown Women Speak: Website
"Initiated by the Pembroke Center Associates in 1982, these oral histories record the experiences of the women of Brown University and Pembroke College." Includes digitized interviews.
Community Organizer Genealogy Project Oral History Interviews
The Center for Community Change created the Community Organizer Genealogy Project in order "to document the development of community organizing, the development of individual organizers and the connections among organizers, organizations and networks." The project was led by Don Elmer who also interviewed the majority of the community organizers during 2008-2010. The project created 100 oral history interviews with community organizers throughout the United States who worked in all aspects of community organizing: neighborhood organizations, labor unions, civil rights, human rights, religious communities. The interviews together provide a history of community organizing during the 20th century as well as the effect of community organizers on the history of the United States.

Subscription Databases at Brown

American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography
Provides access to slave narratives collected by the Works Projects Administration between 1936 and 1938, 2000 edition

2000 edition; a study of the WPA slave narratives. A massive historical collection, it includes complete records for each narrative identifying the narrator, his or her year of birth, and the county and state where the narrator was in bondage.
Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive
A collection of audiovisual interviews with witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides

Between 1994 and 1999, the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation -- now the USC Shoah Foundation Institute -- interviewed nearly 52,000 survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. The Institute interviewed Jewish survivors, homosexual survivors, Jehovah's Witness survivors, liberators and liberation witnesses, political prisoners, rescuers and aid providers, Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) survivors, survivors of Eugenics policies, and war crimes trials participants. The complete archive of these testimonies, which were videotaped in 56 countries and in 32 languages, is now available to Brown students, faculty, and staff.

Multimedia Resources

Voices of American Homemakers Oral History Project
A project of the National Extension Homemaker's Council in the 1980s to document the experiences of American housewives nationwide. 5 volumes of text and 168 sound cassettes.
Annex 1-Size TX23 .V652x 1985
92NY Literary Audio Collection
With recordings from notables like E. E. Cummings, T. S. Eliot, Nadine Gordimer, W.H. Auden, Tony Kushner, Galway Kinnell, Cynthia Ozick, and many others, the collection covers poetry, literature, storytelling, criticism, biography, journalism, and scholarship.

Print and Microform Resources

The Black Women Oral History Project
Transcripts of interviews produced at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Radcliffe. 10 volumes. There is also a printed guide to the interview transcripts.
Rock E185.86 .B544 1991
Oral History Project on the Ukraine Famine
Chiefly in Ukrainian, with summaries in English. 3 volumes.
Rock DK508.833 .U552x 1990
The Worker and Technological Change, 1930-1980
127 interviews on microfiche. Rock Storage Microfiche HD8083 C7 A83x 1983.

Video Resources

Preserving the Legacy
Nine interviews with founding members of the not-for-profit theatre movement, produced by the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) Oral History Project, also known as Voices of the American Theatre. 3 video discs.
Rock Storage PN2266 .P487x 2003

Internet Resources: Selected Projects

Some selected resources:

ACTUP Oral History Project
A collection of interviews with surviving members of the New York chapter of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.
Cultural Equity
Mounted to the web by the Association for Cultural Equity in NYC, the site includes rough footage of folk music as recorded by Alan Lomax, along with interviews, lectures, radio shows and video recordings, still photos and background research prepared by Lomax in the course of his work to document folk traditions in music as shared by performers from around the world.
Farmworker Movement Documentation Project
Includes both streaming audio and transcripts of oral history interviews recorded with members of the United Farmworkers and others key to the development of the movement to organize migrant farmworkers. NOTE: streaming audio on this site requires a Flash plugin
Underground Rhode Island
Oral history project covering the underground arts scene in Rhode Island, organized and compiled by Prof. Paul Buhle and his students in the Department of American Civilization at Brown. Includes audio of the interviews, brief bios on the interviewees and supplementary information.

Internet Resources: Tools and Tips

Interviewing 101
"A few resources for teaching undergrads how to interview for Public-facing Digital Projects. Within One Term." Blog post by Brooke Bryan, Instructor of Cooperative Education at Antioch College.
Making Sense of Oral History
On online guide by historian Linda Shopes, intended for use by students and teachers using oral history in the classroom.
Minnesota Historical Society: Collecting Oral History
This page not only describes the MHS oral history collections, but includes useful guides to establishing and executing an Oral History Project, and for Transcribing, Editing and Processing oral history interviews. The guides can be downloaded and viewed in pdf format.
Oral History Association
An online organ for the principle professional organization for practitioners of oral history, this site includes useful information on the latest technologies and guidelines for Human Subjects and IRB Review as they pertain to oral history projects.
Oral History Digital Toolbox (Digital Omnium)
List of recommended digital tools for the oral historian, compiled by Doug Boyd, Director of the Louis B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
This resource, which can be viewed on the web or downloaded as a pdf, guides the reader to oral history techniques they may use with members of their family or community, and includes a bibliography and sample forms.
Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History
A text guide developed for online use from 1993 to 1999 by Judith Moyer.
Stories Matter
Hosted by the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University in Montreal, Stories Matter provides freely available open source digital tools for migrating oral histories to the web, including a media application that offers an alternative to traditional textual transcription.

Transcription Resources

Automatic Transcription Tools Guide

A very common question is how to transcribe oral history interviews automatically, saving time over manual transcription. The questions suggest some factors to consider when choosing a tool, and the table below compare various tools and options. This is not a comprehensive list, but a guide to some possibilities. Last updated: October 2025

1. How Sensitive Is Your Interview Data?

Automatic transcription tools can fall into three broad categories of security: online tools, which may share your data to train AI models or with third parties; tools available at Brown that are hosted on secure Brown servers; and offline tools, where data is only stored locally (on your computer.) Some examples of online tools include Otterai and Word for Microsoft 365 transcription feature. Brown-secured tools include Panopto, Zoom transcription, and the Brown AI transcription tool developed by OIT and CCV. Offline tools may offer the most privacy but require more technical setup.

2. How Much Audio Do You Have?

If you don't have large quantities of video or audio to transcribe, you might be able to use limited free plans like Rev (45 min/ month), Otter.ai Basic (300 min/month, 3 uploads lifetime), or Word for Microsoft 365 (300 min/month.) If you have larger quantities to transcribe, Panopto does not have limits on the quantity of video it can host.

3. What Is Your Goal?

For what purpose are you transcribing your video or audio? If you need to make videos accessible and provide closed-captioning, Panopto is a good option, as well as Brown Media Services. If you are conducting qualitative research on your transcripts such as coding and analysis, Nvivo and MAXQDA softwares integrate that, although both are paid. If you are doing a digital humanities project and looking for a platform to conduct the full process of remote oral history interviewing, check out TheirStory.

4. What Is Your Budget?

Free options for Brown users include Panopto, Zoom, and Microsoft 365. Whisper and noScribe are free, open-source applications (although Whisper has a paid Pro upgrade.) Paid options include Otter.ai Premium, Vook.ai ($3/hr), MAXQDA add-on, and NVivo add-on

Transcription Tools Comparison

Tool/Service	Security Level	Quantity of audio	Cost	Best for
Brown CCV/OIT AI Transcription Tool	Securely hosted at Brown. Level 2 data	6 hours or 1 GB per job, multiple jobs allowed	Free to Brown users	Generating and editing transcripts
Panopto	Securely hosted at Brown. Level 3 data	No limit	Free to Brown users	Generating closed captions (can be exported)
Zoom Audio Transcription	Securely hosted at Brown	No limit	Free to Brown users	Generating transcripts
Office 365 Web	Online, data may be shared	300 free minutes per month	Free to Brown users	Dictation and generating transcript of audio files
Whisper App	Offline. Data is only stored on your computer	No limit	Free. Mac only.	General use
noScribe	Offline. Data is only stored on your computer	Limited by storage on your device	Free	General use
Otter.ai	Online. Data may be shared	Free plan: 300 monthly transcription minutes; 30 minutes per conversation; Import and transcribe 3 audio or video files lifetime per user	Free and paid plans	Generating transcripts and meeting summaries
Rev	Online, data may be shared	45 free minutes per month	Paid
Brown Media Services Closed Captioning	Securely hosted at Brown	Unknown	Free to Brown users	Generating closed captioning of courses, events, etc for accessibility
MAXQDA add-on	“stored exclusively on GDPR-compliant servers located in Europe. Not shared with third parties”	Depends on plan. Pay per hour	Paid	Transcription integrated with qualitative data analysis
Nvivo add-on	Online	50 hours of Transcription with a yearly subscription, or use pay-as-you-go credits	Paid	Transcription integrated with qualitative data analysis

Transcript Style Guides

Although various tools can allow us to automatically transcribe oral histories, transcripts should still be reviewed and edited manually for errors and style. The way you edit your oral history transcripts should be guided by how they will be used/shared and the goals of your project. Below are some examples of transcript style guides from other oral history projects.

TheirStory

What is TheirStory?

How do I access TheirStory?

1. Review the guidelines for supported oral history projects (below).

2. Describe your project using this project proposal form.

3. The Digital Humanities Librarian will review your project proposal within 2 weeks to determine if your project is a good fit for TheirStory, or will recommend other tools and resources.

4. If approved, the DH Librarian will send a registration link for you to create an account with TheirStory using your Brown email, and create a folder or project for you (as appropriate) to use in TheirStory.

Supported Projects for TheirStory

Oral history projects that wish to use hosted hours on the TheirStory platform will be given priority in the following order:

Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) Projects
Courses in collaboration with CDS projects
Other projects conducting oral histories affiliated with the Brown Library
Digital humanities course projects and digital humanities projects led by individual faculty, undergraduate or graduate students
Other courses at Brown that incorporate an oral history project as part of the coursework
Non-digital humanities oral history projects led by faculty, undergraduate, or graduate students in other fields
(Least support) personal oral history projects
(Least support) other types of video/audio interviews that do not fall under the oral history method e.g. market research interviews

Please note that priority will be given to projects that plan to use the full features of the platform to carry out the entire oral history process from recording to transcribing.