Sage-Tips

How do historians use oral history?

How Do Historians Use It? For the historian, oral history interviews are valuable as sources of new knowledge about the past and as new interpretive perspectives on it. Oral histories also eloquently make the case for the active agency of individuals whose lives have been lived within deeply constraining circumstances.

How do historians verify oral history?

Oral history is not folklore, gossip, hearsay, or rumor. Oral historians attempt to verify their findings, analyze them, and place them in an accurate historical context. In oral history projects, an interviewee recalls an event for an interviewer who records the recollections and creates a historical record.

How are oral histories different than written histories?

Oral history is often one person’s point of view, unless someone gathers a series of interviews on the same issue together in a volume. A traditional written history, by contrast, uses a variety of sources, which may include oral interviews, government reports, newspaper articles, letters, diaries and personal papers.

Is oral history a reliable source?

Historians teach graduate students to trust the written word. But what about the spoken word? Because oral histories rely on the memory of individuals, some of my colleagues believe they are less reliable sources than written documents. But oral histories really can correct, confirm, and add to the historical record.

How do historians apply history?

Traditionally, historians attempt to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. They also use such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures.

Are oral histories primary sources?

Primary sources include documents or artifacts created by a witness to or participant in an event. Primary sources may include diaries, letters, interviews, oral histories, photographs, newspaper articles, government documents, poems, novels, plays, and music.

What is oral history method?

What is Oral History? Oral history is a method of conducting historical research through recorded interviews between a narrator with personal experience of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of adding to the historical record.

What are the historical sources in recording history?

Primary sources may include diaries, letters, interviews, oral histories, photographs, newspaper articles, government documents, poems, novels, plays, and music. The collection and analysis of primary sources is central to historical research.

How is oral history different from oral tradition?

Oral history is fundamentally different from that of oral tradition; oral tradition is a way of transmitting general cultural issues from one generation to another. Oral history, as used currently, refers to the act of collecting evidence and documents, through various scientific methods, mainly active interviewing.

What makes oral history different?

Alessandro Portelli identifies six elements that mark out oral history as intrinsically different or peculiar from other historical sources. These are orality, narrative, subjectivity, credibility, objectivity and authorship. To these might be added performativity, mutability and collaboration.

How was history recorded in ancient times?

History Based on Written Records The first written records date back a little more than 5,000 years in Egypt and ancient Sumer. The earliest Sumerian records were made using reeds cut at an angle to make wedge-shaped (cuneiform) marks on clay, which was then baked hard.

Is the historians is the only source of history?

History is the study of the past. Historical sources that were not written should not be used in writing history. Historians are the only source of history.

What is the meaning of oral history?

Oral History: Defined. Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events.

Where can I learn more about oral history?

The Oral History Association offers several resources for you to learn about all facets of oral history. OHA also offers a series of publications on community oral history, family oral history, oral history and the law, and other subjects.

How to do an oral history interview?

How to Do Oral History 1 Martha Ross: The Six R’s of Oral History Interviewing. 2 Preparing for Oral History Interviews. 3 Suggestions for Recording Oral History Interviews. 4 Suggested Topics/Questions for Oral History Interviews. 5 After the Oral History Interview. 6 Readings and Online Resources.

What is the difference between recording and recording and oral history?

Preserving : Recording preserves the interview, in sound or video and later in transcript for use by others removed in time and/or distance from the interviewee. Oral history also preserves the ENTIRE interview, in its original form, rather than the interviewer’s interpretation of what was said.