Oral History Portals
- Oral History Online This link opens in a new window
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Indexes more than 2,700 collections of oral history in English from around the world. Provides keyword searching of full-text transcripts when available, plus links to audio and video files.
- UCLA Center for Oral History ResearchInformation on the Center's collections and access policies.
- ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new windowSearches finding aids for historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in libraries, museums, and archives around the world. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies.
- Historical VoicesProduced by the Matrix program at Michigan State University. Includes Studs Terkel interviews, African Digital Library, and Earliest Voices: A Gallery from the Vincent Voice Library.
- Calisphere This link opens in a new windowOver one million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more from the collections digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state.
Film and Television Oral Histories and Audio Recordings
- Archive of American Television TVLEGENDS ChannelUsing the YouTube platform, this channel presents hundreds of oral history interviews with major figures in television history. See also the main Archive of American Television site.
- Hindi Cinema: Histories of Film-making This link opens in a new window
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Features interviews with leading Indian film personalities who contributed to the shaping of the ‘Golden Age’ of Hindi cinema and beyond. Includes supplemental photographs and movie posters. Focuses on Hindi cinema, the industry producing Hindi/Urdu language films popularly known as ‘Bollywood’.
- Robert Flaherty Film Seminar ArchiveDigitized recordings from the Flaherty Seminar, which began in 1955 and features discussions with Satyajit Ray, Agnès Varda, Mira Nair, John Cassavetes, and Yasujiro Ozu.
- Hollywood Film Industry Project (Columbia)Index of interviews available at the Columbia Center for Oral History.
- Margaret Herrick Library Oral HistoriesInterviews and oral histories from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, including content from the Writers Guild Foundation, Cinematographer's Guild, and Motion Picture Editors Guild.
- Performing Arts Legacy ProjectA platform from the Research Center for Arts and Culture at The Actors Fund to help older actors (age 62+) document their careers with oral histories, audio and visual clips, and memorabilia.
- Robert W. Wagner Cinematographers Oral Histories (USC)Collection covering 1961-1990. Includes selection of digitized recordings for Early Cinematographers Oral Histories at ASC Clubhouse.
- UCLA Center for Oral History Research: Film and TelevisionIncludes African Americans in Entertainment and Media, Hollywood Blacklist, Hollywood in the CIvil Rights Era, Out of the Seventies: L.A. Women in Film and Video, Ralph Edwards Productions, and The Crafts in Hollywood: Motion Picture Costumers Oral History Project.
- Women in Animation Oral History Transcripts (UCLA)Collection consists of oral history transcripts from interviews conducted by the organization, Women in Animation. Contains interviews with women pioneers from the animation industry. Print finding aid available in Library Special Collections.
- Writers Guild of America Oral History CollectionLocated at the Writers Guild Foundation Archive, and available by appointment only.
Tools for Conducting Oral History Interviews
- Interviewing Guidelines (UCLA)A good overview from the UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research.
- SAGE Research Methods This link opens in a new window
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Books, reference works, and instructional videos about qualitative and quantitative methodologies in the sciences and social sciences. Includes Research Tools (online tools for planning research and choosing methods), Cases (examples of real research), Video (research process, data science, and methods) and Datasets (sample data chosen specifically to support practice with various statistical analysis methods). Includes Diversifying and Decolonizing Research, and Sage Research Methods Video: Quantitative and Mixed Methods.