How do you tell the life of a country through its people? It is a difficult task, to be sure, and in the 1930s and 1940s the Federal Writers' Project sent hundreds of interviewers out across the country to talk to people about their lives and experiences. These interviews touch on the Great Depression, slavery, political views, the role of the federal government, local folklore, and a myriad of...

The American Veterans Center offers this powerful collection of videos featuring the stories of veterans who served during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the Iraq War. These videos include interviews with veterans along with recorded readings of veterans' stories by actors including Leslie Odom and Jon Voight. In one video, created...

The Association of Personal Historians is a group of writers, editors, oral historians, and videographers who assist people and groups in preserving lifestories. The APH list is a place to share information, ask questions, discuss problems and successes, and generally allow for professional contact in a personal, immediate, and friendly context. This list is open to anyone interested in preserving...

Founded in 1970, the Baylor University Institute for Oral History has been collecting interviews ever since. To date, the Institute has collected more than 5,800 interview transcripts, 3,500 of which are available for free online to anyone who might like to view them. In addition, the Institute began to upload audio files of interviews in 2013. The collection is easily browsable and may be...

Dave Brubeck remains of one jazz's living legends; back in 2007 he sat down for a series of interviews with his wife, Iola, at the University of the Pacific. The interviews were filmed on Sanibel Island in Florida and were conducted by Sharon Sutton, the head of special collections at the University of Pacific Library, and Keith Hatschek, director of the music management program in the University...

The Caltech Archives Oral History Project "began in 1978 for the purpose of recording the personal memoirs of the distinguished scientists, teachers and administrators of the Institute." The archive currently includes about 170 interviews, for many of which transcipts are provided. The Online project makes selected interviews available to the public in digital form. Approximately 40 interviews,...

While there are numerous civil rights oral history projects, there are few organized around the remembrances and memories of persons from a particular geographic locale. This collection of eight oral history interviews, conducted by Rebecca Nappi, was created in part by the Washington State University Library in collaboration with the Spokane Spokesman-Review. Visitors to the site can listen to...

The films of Ken Burns have covered the exuberance of jazz in the United States, the world of baseball, and most recently, the experiences of Americans during World War II. Working with the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress, Burns and staff members created this companion website to the film series. The site includes letters, diaries, interviews, and memoirs that cover the...

This remarkable collection brings together video oral histories of Japanese Americans students during World War II. Created by a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, these interviews document the impact that students' wartime experiences had on their college years as well as the rest of their lives. All told, there are eighteen oral histories here and visitors can...

Sponsored by H-Net (discussed in the June 14, 1996 Scout Report), H-ORALHIST is the successor to OHA-L, which began in 1993. H-ORALHIST is a moderated list for people interested in oral history, commonly defined as the collection and preservation of remembrances of past experiences. The moderators invite "subscriptions from people with a broad range of backgrounds, including public historians,...