Research Guides: Oral History + Podcasting: Oral history at Davidson

Request Support

Please email jecottle@davidson.edu to request oral history and/or podcasting support for your class or project. Jessica Cottle and Thomas Epsenschied (https://davidson.libcal.com/appointments/thomasespy/virtual) from the Digital Learning team are available to provide in class sessions or individual sessions upon request.

Available Information Session Topics

Pre-Interview (Goal: Prepare students for the interview, introduce oral history practice, think critically)

Identifying a topic and selecting your interview partner.

Creating open questions.

Selecting an interview space.

Navigating the pre-interview process (IRB, forms, introductions, rights, what resources are available to you?)

Practicing “do no harm” and transparency

Interview (Goal: Prepare students for the post-interview, practice interviewing, think critically)

Identifying a topic and selecting your interview partner.

Practicing open questions.

Mitigating interruptions and other environmental factors.

Tech needs.

Prepping for post-interview processing (thinking of audio formats, technologies, rights, what resources are available to you and the narrator post-interview?)

Post-Interview (Goal: Make the completed interview accessible, reflect on the process, think critically)

OHMS (woven throughout any of these sessions, but a main component of this one, in particular)

Transcription vs time stamping

Tech needs

Hosting your oral history

Navigating the post-interview process (thank you notes, follow-up questions, follow-up research, annotation, transferring records to the Archives, rights)

All-In-One Lightning Session (Goal: Walk away with a broad understanding of the oral history process and what resources are available through the Library and the CTL)

Briefly highlight the components of a pre-interview, interview, and post-interview session.

Podcasting 101

Students will be able to:

Explain what a podcast is in both technical and content terms

Compare and contrast podcasts and traditional broadcast media

Identity common podcast formats

Locate podcast feeds using major aggregator sites

Analyze a podcast for genre and style

Describe the general process of publishing a podcast

Summarize the hardware and software required to produce a podcast

Describe the technical process of producing a podcast (in broad terms)

Selected Oral History Collections in the Library

Digitized Interviews
Library Databases

Digital Davidson: view born-digital and digitized versions of archival materials, special collections, and college scholarship.

Davidson College Collective Memory Collection
- Davidson College Students and Alumni/ae Oral Histories and Interviews
Oral History interviews of the Davidson College Women's History Project [COMING SOON]
Oral History Interviews of the Irving Bienstock Project (2020)

American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography
Full-text transcripts of approximately 4,000 interviews with former enslaved persons in 17 states; the interviews were conducted in the 1930s under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Searchable by surname, state, county, and subject. Also includes sound files.

I Witness
Over 1,000 video testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. From the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation.
Oral Histories of the American South
Digitized versions of 500 oral history interviews drawn from the collection of the Southern Oral History Program. Part of the Documenting the American South, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

HistoryMakers
A primary source archive of filmed oral history interviews of contemporary African Americans who have shaped modern history. The archive represents the authentic voices of a diverse group of African Americans who have made significant contributions to history and politics, education, law, the creative arts, science and medicine, business, the military, and sports.

This database is available at Davidson through May 2019 as part of the ProQuest Access & Build pilot project.

Sample Oral History Projects

New South Voices

New South Voices provides access to more than 700 transcripts of interviews, narratives, and conversations documenting life in the Charlotte, North Carolina region in the twentieth century, including the experiences and language of recent immigrants to the area. The interviews were conducted by UNC Charlotte faculty, students and staff as well as several community organizations.

Brooklyn Oral History Project

The Brooklyn Oral History Project grew out of Dr. Karen Flint’s “Oral History and Memory ” class at University of North Carolina, Charlotte with two sets of graduate students in 2004 and 2007. The goals of the course were to learn the practice of oral history, but also to preserve the memories of every-day life in the Brooklyn neighborhood between the 1950s and 1970s.

Southern Oral History Program

Since 1973, the Southern Oral History Program has worked to preserve the multiplicity of voices that make up the history of the southern United States.

Behind the Veil Oral History Project

The Behind the Veil Oral History Project was led by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies from 1993 to 1995. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the primary purpose of this project was to record and preserve the living memory of African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South between the 1890s to the 1950s.

Voice of Witness

Voice of Witness was established to advance "human rights by amplifying the voices of people impacted by injustice." The initiative provides documentation, guidance, and a number of educational programs around its collections and oral history practice.