Oral History - guide to resources: 1950-1959 (N-Z)

The National Folklore collection consists of thousands of hours of audio recordings of Irish folklore, folk narrative, music, song, custom, belief and oral history. A number of short audio recordings have been made available to listen to online.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore

Keywords: customs; folktales; music; songs

Extensive summaries of a number of oral history interviews from the British Library Sound Archive’s ‘Leaders of National Life’ Collection are available through their online catalogue (catalogue reference number: C408) The collection covers politics, industry, the arts, sports, religion, the professions, administration and communications. The audio recordings of these interviews, along with many more items from the British Library’s National Life Stories collections, are available to listen to in full at the British Library, St Pancras.

Topics: Arts & Culture; Politics & Government; Work

Keywords: industry; politics; religion; sports

As part of their National Life Stories programme, the British Library conducted 200 in-depth life story interviews with contemporary British scientists, engineers and technologists. The interviews are accessible on-site at the British Library and are increasingly being made available online. It is currently possible to listen to over 60 of the interviews via the British Library Sounds website. As well as being listed alphabetically by name, the interviews are also divided by subject.

Topics: Science & Medicine

Keywords: engineering; environment; medicine; science; technology

The complete recordings of 107 oral history interviews with individuals involved in the UK jazz scene are available to listen to through British Library Sounds. The online recordings are only accessible to Higher and Further Education institutions.

Topics: Arts & Culture

Keywords: music

The complete audio recordings of 102 interviews with individuals involved in the recording industry are available to Higher and Further Education institutions through British Library Sounds. Interviewees include artists, engineers, managers, producers, musicians, record company personnel, wildlife recordists, journalists and broadcasters.

Topics: Arts & Culture; Science & Medicine; Work

Keywords: engineering; journalism; music; radio

The full transcripts and summaries of five oral history interviews exploring the lives and careers of a number of pioneers of social research are accessible online through the UK data service. The interviewees include Mildred Blaxter, Leonore Davidoff, Ray Pahl, Paul Thompson and Peter Townsend. A Pioneers of Qualitative Research website was also created in the course of the project, which hosts audio and written extracts from the interviews that can be browsed by theme. The themes include academic discipline, early influences, research methods and women in academia. To access the full data set it is first necessary to sign into the UK data service using your institutional login.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Education; People; Work

Keywords: anthropology; sociology; women

This project, produced by Rowan Arts and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Islington Council, used oral history to explore the social and cultural importance of Ironmonger Row Baths and its surrounding area in south Islington. The project website, produced in 2012, provides online access to 65 short audio and transcribed extracts from the interviews.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People

Keywords: community; leisure; sport

This oral history project, undertaken by the University of Warwick in association with Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum (LASGM), investigated the changing practice and experience of spa therapy during the second half of the twentieth century. 21 written extracts, from interviews conducted with former staff, patients, and medical practitioners of the Royal Pump Rooms in Leamington Spa are currently available online. There are plans to make the entire interview transcripts accessible in the near future.

Topics: Science & Medicine; Work

Keywords: healthcare; leisure

The National Railway Museum in York has made available online a number of audio clips from 16 oral history interviews conducted with railway workers. The National Archive of Railway Oral History, from which these extracts originate, contains over 1000 hours of recollections.

Topics: Work

Keywords: engineering

This oral history project, conducted from 2008 to 2010, interviewed 42 individuals about their memories of Kettle’s Yard over its 50 year history, from its time as the private home of art collector Jim Ede and his wife Helen, to its present status as a University of Cambridge collection and temporary exhibition space. Audio and transcript extracts from the interviews are available online and are keyword searchable. To access the complete interviews, consisting of over 100 hours of audio, contact Kettle’s Yard Education Officer.

Topics: Arts & Culture

Keywords: art; art_history; music

This website hosts the audio files and transcripts of 30 Welsh songs recorded since the 1960s by David Roy Saer, a former research assistant of what was then the Welsh Folk Museum. The songs form part of a much larger collection held by the National Museum of Wales.

Topics: Culture & Folklore

Keywords: songs, Welsh

This website was created by The Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth along with a number of supporting partners. It makes accessible online a number of audio extracts from oral history interviews with those who have lived and worked with the sea in the twentieth century. The audio extracts have been divided into five key themes: Women at Sea; Diving into the Past (about the effort to find, excavate and raise the Mary Rose); Naval Medicine; People and Changing Technology; and Family Matters.

Topics: Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: family; medicine; Navy; technology; women

This project tells the history of Sellafield in West Cumbria by means of oral history interviews with 100 people about their personal experiences of the site. Interviewees include current and retired employees, as well as local residents and opponents. Short audio extracts and complete interview transcripts are accessible online, although it is first necessary to register for a login password. The transcripts are also searchable by concept/topic. The complete recordings are available to listen to at the Cumbria Archive and Local Studies Centre, Whitehaven.

Topics: Science & Medicine; Work

Keywords: community; industry; politics

This archive consists of over 500 recordings of Somerset Life made since the 1970s by local historian Ann Heeley and a variety of other individuals and local history groups. A short audio clip from each recording is available to download from the website. The complete recordings are available to listen to at the Somerset Heritage Centre in Taunton or the Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; community; WWI; WWII

[web archived] The Songs of Steel Community Oral History Project interviewed people in Rotherham who worked within the steel industry. Audio and transcribed extracts for the interviews are accessible online, as are a number of poems and songs produced as part of the project. The complete 30 oral history interviews can be listened to by appointment at the Archives and Local Studies Service, located on the first floor of Rotherham Central Library.

Topics: Work

Keywords: industry; WWII

This resource provides online access to large portions of oral history and other sound recordings held by The Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. The list of interviews is arranged alphabetically by interviewee name. The interview transcripts have also been indexed making them keyword searchable. The collection of interviews, captured in India, the U.K. and the USA, is very wide ranging and includes details of the lives and careers of members of the British Army based in India. A small collection of recordings of music and unusual languages is also accessible online.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: colonialism; education; industry; journalism; language; missionary; music; politics; women

The complete audio recordings of 61 oral history interviews with twentieth-century British sportsmen and women are available for anyone to listen to online through British Library Sounds. The collection includes interviews with tennis players, swimmers, and athletes, as well as with individuals involved in the coaching and teaching of sport.

Topics: Arts & Culture

Keywords: sport

This was part of a broader project to create a digital archive of experiences, memories and reflections about one of London’s most famous streets, the Strand. For the oral history strand of this project students and staff in the English Department at King’s College London conducted interviews with Strand workers and residents. They then turned these interviews into life writing. Some examples of their efforts, which include audio recordings from the interviews, are available on the Strandlines digital community website.

Topics: Education; People; Work

Keywords: community

This is a school run project which began from a desire to record the experiences of individuals who attended the school’s Veterans’ Day in 2008. The complete video recordings of 43 oral history interviews are now available to watch online. The interviews are divided into two sections. The first section is on ‘The Second World War 1939-45’ and includes interviews with members of the fighting forces, with individuals employed as Land Girls, Bevin Boys and in the ATS, and also with individuals who experienced the war in Germany or were affected by the Holocaust. The second section of interviews on ‘Britain and the world 1945-’ covers a wide variety of subjects including the Korean War, sport, science and political involvement.

Topics: People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: Holocaust; migration; mining; military_history; refugees; sport; WWII

The sound archive at St Fagans holds recordings of a wide range of folk narratives as told by oral storytellers in Wales during the second half of the twentieth century. Stories from nine of these storytellers have been made available to listen to online. The entry for each story includes the sound recording of the tale, the text of the narrative, an English translation and background notes. In order to appreciate the international context of the narratives, references have also been made, where appropriate, to types and motifs.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore

Keywords: folktales; stories; Welsh

This website provides the compete interview transcripts and summaries of 50 oral history interviews conducted between 1999 and 2001 with users or former users of the British mental healthcare system. The interviews were designed to capture the memories and experiences of those who lived in asylum based hospital institutions between the 1930s and 1985, before these began to be closed and replaced with different models of treatment. The website allows you to search the complete interview transcripts by keyword or browse them by category. A selection of video excerpts from the interviews is available online, and the complete set is accessible to view by appointment at the British Library, St Pancras, where it is archived as part of the Life Story Collection.

Topics: Science & Medicine; People

Keywords: healthcare; medicine

The complete audio recordings of approximately 260 oral history interviews conducted with individuals involved in British theatre from 1945-1968 are available to access online through British Library Sounds. The interviews were collected as part of a collaborative project between the British Library and De Montfort University. There are interviews with actors, dancers, directors, managers, producers, stage designers, theatre-goers, variety performers, writers and critics.

Topics: Arts & Culture

Keywords: theatre

This oral history project has worked with volunteers from five children’s communities to discover and record the histories of individuals and communities involved in residential therapeutic child care ‘for traumatised, deprived, and delinquent children and young people’ between 1930 and 1980. Recordings from some of these interviews are accessible from the resources section of the website.

Topics: Education, People

Keywords: childhood; healthcare

This one-year project conducted in 2012 worked closely with the Tamil Community Centre in Hounslow to record the memories of Sri Lankan Tamils living in London, particularly those with links to West London and the Hounslow area. 15 life story interviews, along with 30 shorter interviews were collected as part of the project. Edited videos of 13 of the interviews are available to view online and transcribed extracts from all the interviews can be read online or in a downloadable book created as part of the project. The interview extracts are arranged under seven key themes: Early Life in Sri Lanka, Layers of Belonging, Politics & the Nation-State, Troubles, Leaving & Arrival, Transitions, and Home.

Topics: People

Keywords: community; migration

This website is the result of a collaborative project to preserve, digitise, catalogue and make available online thousands of Gaelic and Scots recordings held by the School of Scottish Studies (University of Edinburgh), BBC Scotland and the National Trust for Scotland. Over 30,000 oral recordings of stories, songs, music, poetry, history, traditions and other information are available to listen to online. It is possible to search the recordings by keyword or browse them by Scottish county.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; People

Keywords: folktales; Gaelic; music; poetry; songs; stories

Tocher (meaning a dowry in Scots) provides online access to some of the School of Scottish Studies’ collections of oral tradition. The site provides access to transcriptions rather than audio recordings. These are divided into categories according to type, including Features, Culture and Customs, Beliefs and Superstitions, Legends and Folktales, Tales (non-fiction), and songs.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore

Keywords: childhood; community; folktales; songs; stories; work

This website, initiated by a Wellcome Trust funded research project, has collected together a number of oral histories from lesbian, gay and bisexual people who have undergone therapy in an attempt to make them heterosexual. Interviews with professionals who developed and conducted such treatments have also been collected. 26 of the most revealing narratives that arose from the research are available to read online through the Narratives section of the website (16 are from patients and 10 from professionals). It is also possible to read and listen to views about such treatments on the Interviews page.

Topics: People; Science & Medicine

Keywords: homosexuality; medicine; sexuality

The UK Data Service provides online access to a wide range of qualitative data sets, including oral history resources. The collections are searchable by keyword. Researchers must register with the UK Data Service and state their intended purpose for any data accessed.

Topics: Education; People; Politics & Government; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal

The Aberdeen University Oral History Archive was initially created in 1985 to help historians writing monographs to commemorate the University’s Quincentenary in 1995. Interviewing has continued ever since and over 200 interviews have now been collected with past students, long serving members of staff, and eminent individuals connected with the University. Access to the complete set of recordings is available at the University, but many of the interview transcripts are also accessible online through the University’s archival catalogue.

Topics: Education

Keywords: education; law; music; medicine; students; university; WWI; WWII

This project, funded by the University of Huddersfield, has recorded oral reminiscences relating to the Rugby League community in West Yorkshire. Audio extracts from 26 interviews with players, officials and spectators of Rugby League are available to listen to online. The website also makes accessible online a number of oral history interviews conducted as part of the ‘Black and Minority Ethnic Involvement in Rugby League Project’. This project saw pupils at the Huddersfield Giant Study Centre interview Huddersfield Giants players and staff from black and minority ethnic backgrounds about their lives and rugby league careers.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People

Keywords: rugby; sport

This resource provides online access to audio recordings from 87 life narrative oral history interviews with migrants and returnees from Ulster. The interviews were gathered during the course of two recent academic studies into migration: ‘Narratives of Migration and Return’, conducted from 2004 to 2006, and a follow on study ‘Northern Ireland Emigrant Narratives’ conducted from 2006 to 2008. The emphasis of the collection is on migration that took place during the 1970s, as this was the decade Ulster experienced its highest emigration rate, but migration from the 1930s through to the 1980s is also covered. The interviews are fully keyword searchable or browsable by interviewee gender, age group, religious denomination, birthplace, childhood residence, current residence, emigration destination, decade of emigration or decade of return.

Topics: People

Keywords: migration

This project has been interviewing individuals in Camarthenshire since 2003 about the social and economic changes and influences that have affected agriculture and rural society in Wales since 1947. Short recorded extracts of five interviews conducted in English and three conducted in Welsh are currently available to listen to online and the complete audio recordings will be archived at the Museum of Welsh Life, St. Fagan’s, and in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; community; Welsh

The Wild Rose Heritage and Arts community group, based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, first began by interviewing elderly residents about their experiences growing up in the local valleys. Since then the project has expanded and oral history interviews have been conducted with residents of all ages to explore how people are changed by the places in which they live and work. The complete audio recordings and transcripts of approximately 130 interviews are currently available to access through the site.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; childhood; community; WWII

This project, launched in 2000, represents the oral history strand of a research initiative entitled 'Women and Irish Society' run by University College Cork. The project interviewed women about their experiences of paid work, family life and schooling in the Munster counties of Cork, Kerry and Limerick during the period from 1936 to 1960. The project sought to explore how women in Munster experienced or reacted to prevailing social, cultural and legal definitions of women as home-based workers. The audio recordings of 41 individual interviews are currently available to read online, and short audio clips of the interviews are also arranged by category.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: education; family; gender; women

This project recorded the memories of individuals involved in work and industry in the area of Nuneaton and Bedworth during the 20th century. The audio files, and summaries or written transcripts, of over 25 interviews are available to access online. It is possible to search the interviews by keyword.

Topics: Work

Keywords: engineering, industry; mining; union; WWII

YouTube provides access to a large quantity of resources, both oral history interviews and information videos on the conduct and practice of oral history. Some organisations, archives and oral history projects have their own YouTube channels.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Arts & Culture; Education; People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal