Northeastern State University

Dr. Farina King, SOHA 1st VP, teaches oral history methodology at Northeastern State University. She hosted a conversation with Sarah Milligan, Head, Oklahoma Oral History Research Program and Julie Pearson-Little Thunder at Oklahoma State University. View their digital collections here that are hosted by CONTENTdm and Omeka: https://library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/digital/. You will learn about Oklahoma Conservation Heritage, Married for Life, Oklahoma Native Artists, OSU and OK Diverse Sexuality and Gender, Spotlighting Oklahoma, and other collections. Jennifer Keil, SOHA President, provided feedback about her role as a digital historian for her company 70 Degrees. She is working on California community oral history projects for cities, governments, and non-profit organizations. View some of the Orange County interviews with the public library here: ocstories.org.

Our discussions about preservation and access emphasized the changes in technologies. We discussed migration to new platforms and metadata structure like XML files. To learn more about project management and receive workshop training, we encourage you to attend oral history conferences. Sarah is the American Folklore Society, Annual Meeting Local Arrangements Co-Chair (2020) October 13-17, 2020 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Farina and Jennifer are organizing the Southwest Oral History Association meeting March 27-29, 2020 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Voices – Veterans Storytelling Project

Our next public reading of VOICES will take place on Saturday, May 9, 2020, 7:00pm at Heroes Hall, OC Fair & Event Center! Admission and parking are free.

What’s YOUR story? We are calling on veterans to participate in our VOICES: Veterans Storytelling Project, which offers free coaching to vets in compiling and sharing their stories of life before, during and after military service.

Hear what veterans have to say about participating in VOICES:

The project is conducted by Arts Orange County in collaboration with Heroes Hall at OC Fair & Event Center and Tierney Center for Veteran Services at Goodwill OC. If you are interested in learning more about how to share your own stories through this program, please contact Dave Barton at (714) 598-7406. Dozens of OC veterans have participated in the four years we have offered this program. There is no cost to participate.

 

VOICES is presented by:

VOICES is made possible in part through funding from:

 

The William Gillespie Foundation

 

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Visit Heroes Hall on-lineView excerpts from past VOICES readings:

 

The voices of veterans come alive at Heroes Hall at the OC Fair & Event Center as former military men and women share their very personal and poignant stories of service. VOICES is the culmination of a six-week veterans’ storytelling workshop.

Follow and Share @voicesveterans on Facebook

View the 2018 Program

 

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October 5, 2019 Public Reading 

OHA Archives Interest Group

Automated Transcription Part 2, will be on November 15th, 2pm to 3pm EST.

Our presenters for this session will be Allison Schein Holmes, Archivist at the WFMT & Studs Terkel Radio Archive, and Brad Spry, Programmer Analyst with Atkins Library’s Technology and Digital Strategies team at UNC Charlotte.

The Zoom link for the conference call next week (November 15th from 2-3 PM EST) is https://psu.zoom.us/j/846329038. If
you are unable to join via Zoom online, please follow one of the optional connection methods below:

iPhone one-tap (US Toll): +16468769923,846329038# or +16699006833,846329038#

Telephone: Dial: +1 646 876 9923 (US Toll), or +1 669 900 6833 (US Toll)

Visit https://www.oralhistory.org/oha-archives-interest-group-oha-aig/ for more information.

Hansen Lecture to Focus on Digitizing Japanese American History

In the fall of 2013, Greg Williams contacted Cal State Fullerton’s Lawrence De Graaf Center for Oral and Public History with a proposal to create a single website housing Japanese American history archives from various collections in the California State University system.

Today, the systemwide project has 14 collaborators — including COPH — and has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Archives, National Park Service and the California State Library.

Williams, director of archives and special collections at Cal State Dominguez Hills, will visit CSUF Tuesday, Nov. 5, to deliver COPH’s annual Hansen Lecture on “Building a Statewide Digital and Archival Collaboration: The CSU Japanese American Digitization Project.” Free and open to the public, the lecture will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Titan Student Union, Portola Pavilion A.

“It is evident that the materials on this site hold research value for the hundreds who have used them,” said Natalie Navar-Garcia, COPH archivist. “COPH is proud to be a part of the collaborative CSU Japanese American website project.”

True to its student-driven approach, COPH’s Japanese American Oral History Project was launched in 1972 at the urging of undergraduate history major Betty E. Mitson. Working with faculty members Gary L. Shumway and Arthur Hansen, she transcribed, edited and indexed a series of tape-recorded interviews pertaining to the World War II Japanese American evacuation.

The project continued to engage students and faculty members in research for decades to come, amassing an archive of more than 300 oral histories. The collection includes notable oral histories with community leader Clarence I. Nishizu, civil rights activist Frank Emi, Nisei journalist James Omura, and longtime Manzanar Committee chair Sue Embrey.

To date, COPH has contributed over 100 oral histories to the CSU collaborative website.

Read more here: http://news.fullerton.edu/2019fa/Hansen-Lecture.aspx

Voices of the Golden State

The California State Library has begun work on a new website, Voices of the Golden State. This website will feature oral histories that recount California’s rich history and heritage. In focusing on California’s history, the ever-growing collection will especially highlight the state’s diversity. Additionally, it will be a platform through which oral history programs and archives can promote their work and collections. With this announcement, we hope you’ll consider contributing interviews to the site.

To provide guidance to both potential contributors and users of the site, the Library developed a Statement on Diversity. Here’s an excerpt:

As this page seeks to explore California’s rich diversity, we will strive to include interviewees of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, religious backgrounds, economic backgrounds, immigration status, abilities, as well as voices from all the geographic regions of the state. Because California is one of the largest economies in the world, these interviews will reveal the multitude of industries that exist in the state, and the experiences of those who have worked in these industries. Finally, the interviews will reflect the importance of civic involvement and political action in California’s history and how Californians from many backgrounds have meaningfully engaged in this work.

Information on how to contribute interviews will be available closer to the site’s launch later this fall. There will not be a limit on how many oral histories a program or archive can contribute, but submissions will be reviewed and featured on a schedule. The success of Voices of the Golden State will rely on contributing programs opening their oral history collections. We hope you’ll join us in this endeavor.

Allison K. Tracy-Taylor

Project Lead, Voices of the Golden State

California State Library

Read more from the Fall 2019 SCA Newsletter!

Allison is the OHA President and a SOHA member.

Join SOHA

The Southwest Oral History Association (SOHA) was founded in 1981 to serve practitioners of oral history in Arizona, Southern California, Nevada, New Mexico and contiguous areas. Today, we have expanded to Texas, Oklahoma, Central and Northern California, and other arts of the Southwest. Through publications, meetings, workshops and special events, we support and promote oral history as a method for exploring and recording history, culture, and current experiences. In this endeavor, we cooperate with other organizations and institutions in the region and maintain close ties with the national Oral History Association. Visit www.southwestoralhistory.org to learn more. Please become a member by visiting https://squareup.com/store/southwest-oral-history-association. We hope to see you at SOHA’s Annual Conference, March 27-29, 2020, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Please see our Call for Proposals with a deadline of January 6, 2020.

SOHA at OHA 2019

It was wonderful seeing our network at the Oral History Association conference in Salt Lake City, Utah! Thank you for joining us. Congratulations to Dr. García, the 2019 Mink awardee, and all the award recipients. Please see some highlights from this year’s conference.

See you at UNLV March 27-29, 2020. Participate by submitting a proposal. See https://www.southwestoralhistory.org/SOHA2020_CFP.pdf for more information.

Mink Award

Please share this award event PDF with the SOHA community! We look forward to seeing you in Salt Lake City.

Oral History 101

CSU Dominguez Hills Gerth Archives and Special Collections will be hosting “Oral History 101,” an
introductory workshop to the field of
oral history, on Thursday, October 24th from 1:30-3:30.

The workshop will take attendees from initial idea through finished
product. We will cover the basics of oral history, project planning,
technology, interview setup, writing questions, release forms, providing
access and/or a transcript, available resources, and preservation. Additionally, the workshop will include a
series of question and answer examples to help individuals hone
interviewing skills and provoke additional discussion in the workshop.

If you would like to join us or have any questions, please contact Beth McDonald at 310-243-2431 or emcdonald@csudh.edu