Category: Uncategorized

New Oral History Room (USA)

Technology has transformed genealogy research, so the Allen County Public Library's Genealogy Center has remodeled some of its space to build on those advances.  This Thursday, the Genealogy Center, which is located in the downtown library, will hold a grand opening for its new Discovery Center and new Life Stories Center.
This is an interesting article although it is in USA.  We can learn from what has been done here.  Read whole article here.

The Importance of Oral History

For Utah Humanities Council Grant and Outreach Program Officer Jodi Graham, one of the best parts about history is learning it from the view of those who have lived it — and oral histories are the gateway into giving history its character. “I just love finding all these stories,” Graham said. “When you talk to people who lived through a certain time period, you’ll find nuggets of history that might not have been uncovered otherwise. It makes everything more personal.”  For full story click here.  This story could apply to any community.

Sarawak Oral History

The oral land laws of the Dayak and Orang Ulu indigenous communities have been compiled into a book to make sure their rich ancestral traditions and way of life will not become forgotten.  The pionerring effort was carried out by the Society for Rights of Indigenous People of Sarawak (Scrips), a community-based organistion.  It is a noble move by the society which has more than 30 ethnic and sub-ethnic groups.  The book, entitled “Our communal territories, our communal rights”, is in Bahasa Malaysia and compiled by Scrips secretary Michael Jok and community chief ex-Temenggong Pahang Deng.  For full story click here.

Southern Oral History Program

In our pilot episode we discuss silence and power in oral history. Can oral history teach us to be better listeners? Can we learn how to pay attention–not just to what is being said, but to what isn’t? We’ll talk with Southern Oral History Program founding Director Jacquelyn Dowd Hall about a 1974 interview with Katherine DuPre Lumpkin that is shot through with silences; you’ll get tips on how to handle it a question you ask leads to a long silence; and we’ll hear clips from our collection in which three different women talk about the relationship between silence and their own activism.  For full story including podcasts click here. Also click here for second episode.

Bill Bunbury’s new book

A former broadcaster, Mr Bill Bunbury presented an oral history program for many years on ABC Radio National. He came to the conclusion that people and place are one and the same. "Social history is environmental history," Mr Bunbury said. In the 1980s, while working on a social history program about the life of foresters before mechanisation, Mr Bunbury was struck by the deep reverence these men had for the forest, which provided their livelihood. "They felt the forest had a beauty that they wanted to preserve. I learned more and more that farmers have the same feeling. We valued land, but we hadn't learned all its lessons." Mr Bunbury's book is Invisible Country.  For full story click here.

Italian Market Gardeners

There will be a presentation on February 3 from writer and oral historian Madeleine Regan, on a project which has grown from a single idea to a substantial archive of interviews held at the State Library and a website with audio, transcripts and photos. In more than 70 hours of recorded interviews, Regan has traced the stories of a group of northern Italians, and their descendants, who came to Adelaide from the Veneto region and took up land in adjoining 10 acre allotments near the River Torrens in the Frogmore and Findon Rd areas in the city’s west. As Regan says, until she began work on the project, she, like me, believed that the Italian community who worked the market gardens here in Adelaide and elsewhere across Australia were post-Word War II migrants who joined the great wave of European-born “new Australians” who had such a profound effect on our Anglocentric culture.  For full story click here.