{"id":75720,"date":"2014-07-01T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=75720"},"modified":"2014-07-01T10:46:04","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T15:46:04","slug":"say-what-fascinating-oral-histories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=75720","title":{"rendered":"Say What? Fascinating Oral Histories"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Tracy Wasserman, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Florida<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Say What? Fascinating Oral Histories<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Tracy-Wasserman-72dpi\"<\/a>Have you ever wondered what those who lived during a specific era or world-altering event in history\u00a0had to say about that event, in their own words? Or what shared memories certain groups of people\u00a0have in common? Wonder no more because digital libraries around the world are busy building oral\u00a0history libraries of unique testimonies that are both captivating and informative.<\/p>\n

Memory is a significant link to the past, and has greatly influenced our understanding of historical\u00a0events. Oral history libraries provide us with eyewitness accounts and memories surrounding the major\u00a0events of humankind that capture the essence of a moment or a way of thinking. Here are some truly\u00a0fascinating oral history digital library collections freely available online:<\/p>\n

1. Nevada Test Site Oral History Project<\/a><\/strong>. 65 miles north of Las Vegas is the 1,360 square mile site\u00a0carved out by US Department of Energy as a nuclear device testing ground from 1951 to 1992.\u00a0The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is a collection\u00a0of the oral history narrations of people who participated in and were affected by the test site.\u00a0Listen to the story of Anne Welsh<\/a>, a protestor with the Nevada Desert Experience<\/a>, who grew\u00a0up 60 miles from the test site, remembering as a child hearing the blasts and seeing the clouds,\u00a0and being proud to be part of a such a cool thing (and then feeling later in life like she have\u00a0been part of the Mafia as a kid). The collection includes other fascinating and diverse stories\u00a0about the test site, from the scientists and engineers involved in the project, to the military,\u00a0administration and labor and support personnel employed there, as well as the observations of\u00a0local residents and protest groups.<\/p>\n

2. Voices of the Holocaust<\/strong>.<\/a> The Voices of the Holocaust project of the Paul V. Galvin Library at\u00a0the Illinois Institute of Technology houses 118 audio interviews conducted in 1946 of displaced\u00a0persons in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany by Dr. David P. Boder<\/a>, who was committed\u00a0to making Nazi atrocities known through the voices of the people who lived through them.\u00a0The collection also includes research resources and links to other survivor testimony archives,\u00a0as well as reference maps of camps, ghettos, interviewee birthplaces, locations during the\u00a0Nazi invasion, and liberation and interview locations. It\u2019s a truly moving collection of audio\u00a0interviews conducted in many languages, with English written translations included.<\/p>\n

3. Arkansas Studios Institute<\/a><\/strong>. The audio\/video collection of the Arkansas Studios Institute, a\u00a0collaboration of the Central Arkansas Library System and the University of Arkansas at Little\u00a0Rock, is an invaluable oral chronicle of race relations and other historical events in Arkansas\u00a0history. Listen to Annie Abrams<\/a> describe her childhood during the Great Depression and her\u00a0later life as a civil rights activist, and Carolyn Hubert<\/a> describe her life leading up to her job as\u00a0administrator of the Arkansas Governor\u2019s Mansion.<\/p>\n

4. Pepperdine University Library\u2019s Historical Sound Recordings<\/a><\/strong>. The historical sound recordings\u00a0of this digital collection include speeches given by national figures at Pepperdine University and\u00a0surrounding locations, that track the history of Pepperdine University and southern California.\u00a0Be moved by Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s<\/a> speech at the LA Coliseum in 1964 on civil rights and\u00a0the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and inspired by Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor\u2019s<\/a> speech on\u00a0women\u2019s rights at the Pepperdine University School of Law in 1985.<\/p>\n

You can share and preserve your own family history story<\/a>, or record and share your story for\u00a0StoryCorps<\/a>, an oral history archive of over 45,000 interviews of Americans of all backgrounds and\u00a0beliefs, preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. We are all unique, and our\u00a0insights and memories today could be a guiding light for our children tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Tracy Wasserman, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Florida Say What? Fascinating Oral Histories Have you ever wondered what those who lived during a specific era or world-altering event in history\u00a0had to say about that event, in their own words? Or what shared memories certain groups of people\u00a0have in common? Wonder no more because digital libraries around the…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":57048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,6038,4789,3652,6312,6313,5893],"class_list":["post-75720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-digital-libraries","tag-history","tag-inalj-florida","tag-oral-history","tag-oral-history-libraries","tag-tracy-wasserman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Tracy-Wasserman.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-jHi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}