Links

Projects

Archive of American Television has many video interviews with people involved with US television.

BBC Collections:

• Audio/video collection

• How to do Oral History

• WW2 People's War

Bangla Stories is based on a three year research project at the London School of Economics and University of Cambridge exploring the history and experience of migration from the Bengal delta region in the period after Indian Independence in 1947. Over 180 life history interviews with first generation migrants living in India, Bangladesh and the United Kingdom. The project focused on Bengali Muslims, who were the largest group to settle in  the UK.

The British Cinema History Research Project at the University of East Anglia.

The British Diplomatic Oral History Programme established with the approval and co-operation of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) creates a valuable new body of research material for the study of British diplomatic history.

The British Film Institute's Screen Online website has interviews with major figures in the British film industry.

The British Hinduism Oral History project

The British Library online:

Main info pages:
Oral history collections: www.bl.uk/oralhistory/collections
National Life Stories projects: www.bl.uk/nls

Catalogues:
Sound Archive Online Catalogue: http://cadensa.bl.uk
Explore the British Library (umbrella catalogue, including the Sound Archive catalogue): http://searchbeta.bl.uk

Blogs:
‘Sound Recordings’ blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/archival_sounds
‘History of Science’ blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/oralhistoryofscience

Online Access:
Archival Sound Recordings (ASR): http://sounds.bl.uk
Food Stories: www.bl.uk/learning/citizenship/foodstories/index.html
Voices of the Holocaust: www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/holocaust.html
Children’s Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age: www.bl.uk/playtimes

This report from 2010 gives a useful overview of oral history at the British Library - http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/sound/ohist/ohnls/nlsreports/nlsreport2010.pdf

Centre of South Asian Studies: The Centre, based at the University of Cambridge, has digitised their collection of 300 oral history interviews. The interviews include first-hand accounts of meetings with Mahatma Gandhi and testimonies by freedom fighters whose terrorist acts aimed to force an end to British rule.

Chemical Heritage Foundation oral history project. Based in Philadephia, USA, collections of oral history interviews with women and men who have contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Commonwealth Oral Histories. The aim of this AHRC funded project is to produce a unique digital research resource on the oral history of the Commonwealth since 1965. When completed, it will include at least 60 major interviews with leading figures in the recent history of the organisation

Diabetes Stories. Life stories from the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Edwardians Online. A web-based multimedia, digital resource based on a set of 444 life history interviews. The collection is known as Family Life and Work Experience Before 1918 and you will have to search for this on the catalogue.

G8 Research Group - an Oral History of the G7/G8 from the University of Toronto.

Historical Voices. Developing a rich set of online exhibits and educational curricula which utilize audio files as a historical source.

The History Makers. The USA's largest African American video oral history collection.

Imperial War Museum oral history collection

India's Independence Movement. For the first time a concentrated effort is made to video-record reminiscences of nonviolent fighters for India's freedom. Systematically, GandhiServe Foundation, in cooperation with its sister organization, GandhiServe India Trust, Mumbai/India, identifies these veterans and talks to them about various aspects of the struggle, which was the first large campaign in history based on truth and nonviolence.

Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE): oral history interviews about the electrical and electronic industries in the USA.

Living Stories. The Living Stories website has been created as part of the Haemophilia and HIV Life History project; a collection of 30 interviews. This website focuses on the life histories of eight of those people and presents key themes that emerge from the interviews using edited audio extracts.

Memory of Nation is a digital archive of interviews with witnesses from throughout the 20th century (from the Second World War, former prisoners of concentration camps and gulags, political prisoners etc.) The goal is to make this portal into the digital archive of witnesses from different oral history projects in all European countries.

‘Oral History in the UK’ collection on the UK Web Archive.

The Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center for Public Affairs. Systematically and comprehensively debriefing the principal figures in the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton, with plans to do the same for future presidents.

Recollections of WW2 is a directory of oral history holdings in the UK which contain information about the Second World War.

The Royal Voluntary Service's 'Voices of Volunteering' project has many oral history clips as part of resources for schools about volunteering.

Scott Polar Research Institute: a small-scale programme of interviews with explorers, scientists, missionaries and others working in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Sea Your History: The history of the Royal Navy in the 20th century.

Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project: documenting the memories of the women who powered the women's liberation movement in the UK.

Speaking for Ourselves: An oral history of people with cerebral palsy. Conducted by Scope.

Suez Oral History Project at King's College, London

Theatre Archive Project: The website accompanies a major project to reinvestigate British theatre history 1945-1968, from the perspectives of both the theatregoer and the practitioner. The Project Team includes staff from both the British Library and the University of Sheffield.

Therapeutic Living with Other People's Children - an oral history of residential therapeutic child care in the UK c.1930 - c.1980

Timewitnesses: Memories from the last century from around the world.

Travellers Remember: Digital stories told by travellers. From the Rural Media Company in the West Midlands.

The USC Shoah Foundation Institute is home to the largest video archive of testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses

Up and Under - the Rugby League Oral History Project. Funded by an £85,000 grant from the University of Huddersfield which develops the University’s links with both the sport and the communities of West Yorkshire in which it is played by providing a substantial boost to the promotion of Rugby League heritage.

Voices of the Manhattan Project is a joint project by the Atomic Heritage Foundation and the Los Alamos Historical Society to create a public archive of our oral history collections of Manhattan Project veterans and their families. 

Voices of Post War England is an oral history blog which looks at working class history in England.

Women in Chemistry Oral History Project: an oral history project based at Iowa State University focusing on women in chemistry and chemical engineering.

The Workers' War: Home Front Recalled: recording and commemorating the role played by trade unions and workers on the Home Front in the UK during the Second World War.

Organisations