In Spring 2009, I took Oral HIstory at the University of Maine with archivist Pamela Dean; the following semester, I had the pleasure of team-teaching it with Unity College's history professor, Chris Beach.
Oral history is a fascinating way to document peoples' first-hand experiences of institutions, events, or periods of time. A number of libraries have undertaken oral history projects in order to collect and preserve unique information about their communities; teaching a college class presents an opportunity to introduce students to this unique method and to help them learn more about their academic community's past and present.
Wikispaces provided a good platform for organizing the course. Within it we were able to create an open area for posting course documents and doing group work. Permissions settings allowed us to lock some pages and open up others for everyone to edit. Each student also had his or her own presentation page with pictures of inverviewees; playable audio clips of interviews; indexes; and a brief transcription for each interview. The wiki was easy to use, flexible, and supported a wide variety of media formats.
http://oralhistory.unitycollege.wikispaces.net/
I subsequently had the pleasure of presenting a program on oral history at Maine Academic Libraries Day, Colby College, April 16, 2010.
PPT: Oral History and Libraries
There are professional guidelines and standards for doing oral history (many fine books are available, but the basics are outlined nicely in the text we used--Barbara W. Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan, The Oral History Manual, Second Edition). I recommend the study and practice of oral history to anyone who enjoys talking with people and wants to learn something about the past.
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