Notes for Oral Histories

Notes for Oral Histories

What can be done with oral histories:

Examples of how specific communities have tried to document their experiences:

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project

http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/

The Wing Luke Asian Museum is a collaborator on project to document the Japanese American internment during WWII.

http://www.densho.org/

Other Asian-American oral history projects have been donated by community activists:

Washington State University Libraries

Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections

http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/Holland/masc/finders/cg654.htm

Example of description of collection and its importance:

Frank Chin
Oral History Collection, ca. 1974-1986

The Frank Chin Oral History Collection was donated to the Washington State University Libraries in 1989 by Dr. Gail Nomura, former director of the Washington State University Asian American Studies Program. Dr. Nomura acquired the collection from Frank Chin; it was processed by Lisa Kliger in 1997 under the supervision of Manuscripts Librarian Robert Matuozzi.

UW Special Collections

http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcoll/findaids/docs/papersrecords/DrakeLaura5209.xml

See use of interview summaries in the UW Special Collections.

Scope and Content

The collection consists of seven interviews conducted by Laura Anne Drake with stage performers, audience members, and a theater manager, all of whom were involved primarily with vaudeville in Seattle and elsewhere on the West Coast. Drake taped the interviews on audio cassette tapes with support from a special projects grant from the King County Landmarks and Heritage Commission in 1999-2000. All recordings were made in 2000, with the exception of the Ted Harris interview, which was made ca. 1979 or 1980. Each audio interview is accompanied by a transcript, transcript index, and biography. Photocopied materials, including photographs, also supplement some interviews.

INTERVIEW SUMMARIES

Albin, Dolores, dancer, singer, comedian. Starting in 1916, Dolores Albin performed in a vaudeville song and dance act in Chicago. After her family moved to Los Angeles, she became part of "Dolores and Eddy", a vaudeville act booked through the Fanchon and Marco circuit. Later, Dolores was part of the three-person Adagio Act, where she was thrown between two men as part of the dance act. The group performed with the Paramount Publix Units, playing Paramount Theatres all over the country. This interview was taped in Los Angeles.

State Level

California, at UCB, Regional Oral History Office, in Bancroft Library:

The Regional Oral History Office is a research program of the University of California, Berkeley, working within The Bancroft Library.

ROHO conducts, teaches, analyzes, and archives oral and video history documents in a broad variety of subject areas critical to the history of California and the United States.

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/

Detailed inventory of the tapes:

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/pdfs/jones_reginald.pdf

Mario Salvo speech

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/FSM.html

For control of access see UCLA

http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/ohp/ohpaccess.htm

Washington State:

HistoryLink: Encyclopedia of Wash State History

http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=2429

Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI)

Speaking Seattle Oral History Project, Sights and Sounds from Seattle's Past