Oral History - guide to resources: O-S

‘Observing the 80s’ makes available online a number of digitised archival holdings, which relate to the 1980s, from both Mass Observation and the British Library Oral History Collections. The aim of bringing these collections together in an accessible format is to stimulate academic research that spans current approaches to the decade, whilst also encouraging the collections’ use by a wide range of subject disciplines. From the Mass Observation collections, written responses from across the decade by 23 men and women, from a variety of social backgrounds and ages, were chosen for digitisation. The entire audio recordings of 26 interviews from the British Library Oral History Collections were also selected for digitisation.

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

Keywords: finance; healthcare; union

The recordings of 137 items documenting children’s play, folklore, language and literature have been made available for anyone to listen to online through British Library Sounds. The recordings were produced throughout England and Scotland from 1969 to 1983. There are also two sets of recordings made outside the UK, in Oslo, Norway and Capri, Italy.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore

Keywords: childhood; language; literature

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

In 2012 a series of oral history interviews were conducted with staff members who worked for the Science Museum Group during the period 1973-2000. This was a period of important institutional change for the Museum, encompassing the tenures of two very different Directors: Dame Margaret Weston (1973-1986) and Sir Neil Cossons (1986-2000). Video extracts of these interviews are available online.

Topics: Arts & Culture; Science & Medicine

Keywords: museum

This ongoing project has conducted and filmed 90 oral history interviews with WWII veterans. The project is particularly focussed on recording the memories of men and women who served in intelligence or resistance roles, such as SOE, Y Service, MI9, SIS, Station X, the FANYs, and the SAS. The interviews will be archived at the Imperial War Museum and other relevant archives, including the Special Forces Club, Royal Signals Museum, Beaulieu, and the Bletchley Park Trust. The interviews are not currently available online, but the website links to another project ‘Sentinels of Britain’, which hosts short video clips and transcribed extracts from 14 interviews with WWII veterans of the Royal Observer Corps.

Topics: War & Conflict

Keywords: intelligence; military_history; women; WWII

The aim of this ongoing oral history project is to collect 100 interviews recording the memories and views of key figures in the Irish peace process since the 1960s. The decision was taken to embargo these interviews for up to 40 years in order to encourage frankness. A number of edited interviews with representatives from the women’s movement and education are, however, shortly to be made available through the website. The project website also provides an extensive list of links to previously conducted interviews regarding the peace process, which are now available online, under the Layers of Meaning Online Directory section.

Topics: Politics & Government; War & Conflict

Keywords: art; community; education; politics; sport; union; women

In 2000-2003, the Feminist Archive South conducted a large oral history project that collected the personal memories of women who were involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Bristol. Visit this blog to find out more about the project and download excerpts and summaries from the interviews.

Topics: People; Politics & Government

Keywords: feminism; politics; women

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 searchable directory lists UK collections of oral history interviews relating to the Second World War. The majority of the collections listed have websites, and some of these enable researchers to download transcripts of interviews or listen to audio recordings or videos online.

Topics: War & Conflict

Keywords: portal; WWII

Refugee Voices is a collection of 150 filmed interviews with Jewish survivors and refugees from Nazism who came to live in Britain. All the interviews in the collection have been transcribed with time-codes and are searchable via a comprehensive collection database. One of the interviews is accessible online via a password protected section of the website. Please contact the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) for password information.

Topics: People; War & Conflict

Keywords: Holocaust; Jews; migration; refugees; WWII

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

The Second World War Experience Centre, first established in 1999, aims to collect and widen access to surviving personal testimony of individuals who lived through the Second World War. ‘The Clandestine War’ section of the website contains some written personal testimonies and audio clips from interviews. To access the entire collection, individuals can arrange to visit the Centre’s archive based in Walton, near Wetherby.

Topics: War & Conflict

Keywords: intelligence; military history; WWII

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 project recorded oral history interviews with women at the forefront of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Extracts from the interviews have been arranged by theme and are available to read or listen to through the project website. The chosen themes are: Family and Children; Bodies, Minds and Spirits; Sex, Love and Friendship; Race, Place and Nation; Education; Equality and Work; Activism; Politics and Legislation; Changing Cultures and the Arts; and Who We Were, Who We Are. The complete 60 audio interviews and verbatim transcripts are only accessible onsite at the British Library, but extensive content summaries of many of the interviews are available through the British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue.

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

Keywords: education; feminism; politics; race; women

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

To mark the 40th Anniversary Reunion of the International Brigade Association, in 1976, the IWM Sound Archive established an oral history project to record the experiences and memories of individuals involved in the Spanish Civil War. The collection is largely made up of interviews with British International Brigade volunteers, but there are also recordings of interviews with medical aid workers, non-British volunteers, Spanish soldiers, Spanish civilians and refugees, and a few with individuals who fought for Franco. Six short extracts from these interviews are available to read and listen to online. The complete collection is accessible at IWM London.

Topics: War & Conflict

Keywords: military history; politics; Spanish Civil War

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