Oral History - guide to resources: T-Z

[Remote access unavailable as an ongoing consequence of the 2023 British Library cyberattack - please refer to the interim Sound and Moving Image Catalogue]
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 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

Scotland’s online resource dedicated to audio recordings of Scotland’s cultural heritage. Its principal content is songs, music, history, poetry, traditions and stories, recorded from the 1930s onwards. The website contains material from three archives: The School of Scottish Studies (University of Edinburgh), The Canna Collection and BBC Radio nan Gàidheal and there are recordings in Gaelic, Scots and English.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; People

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

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 UK Data Service QualiBank is an online tool for browsing and searching the contents of a selection of qualitative data collections held at the UK Data Service. The system complements the UK Data Service's Discover and can be seen as the successor to Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) Qualidata.

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

Records the history of Alternative Theatre in the 1960s, 70s and 80s through interviews and the collecting of archive material. Companies involved were among some of the first Black, Asian, lesbian, gay, women’s, disabled, political, experimental, TIE and community-based theatre groups seen in Britain. Work ranged from experiments in physical and visual theatre or performance art, to vernacular drama, agit-prop and satire. Short audio and video extracts, or summary transcripts, from some interviews are accessible online, alongside a short biography of each interviewee. DVDs of the full recordings have been deposited with the British Library Sound Archive, the V&A Theatre Collections and Sheffield University. Contact the depositories directly if you wish to view or listen to the complete interviews.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People

Keywords: community; disability; homosexuality; politics; theatre

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

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation in 1963, the University of York has begun recording the recollections of alumni, current staff members, and those involved in the creation of the University. The interview recordings are archived at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, via whose website you can read the transcripts and listen to the recordings.

Topics: Education

Keywords: architecture; students; university

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 interviewed 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 were made available to listen to online and the complete audio recordings are 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

Oral history project to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the University in 2015, capturing the memories of those who had studied, worked and lived near Warwick University since its creation in 1965.

Topics: Education

Keywords: university

Audio clips from interviews about life on and around Ireland's waterways.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: rivers; waterways; barges

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

The key objective of the Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context is to develop a unique digital research resource of extended interviews on the national and diplomatic activism around the Windrush scandal, supported by digitized government documents from the British archives and Caribbean government records. 60 oral history interviews were collated, of which a sample is available on the website.

Topics: People; Politics & Government

Keywords: Windrush; Commonwealth; Caribbean; diplomacy; activism; migration; race; post-colonial; community

The TUC has produced a series of films containing oral history interviews with women and union representatives involved in major cases in the fight for equal pay since 1968. They are available to watch online through this website.

Topics: People; Politics & Government; Work

Keywords: union; women

This project, launched in 2011, documents feminist music-making from the 1970s and 1980s, which formed part of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Information about individual bands and musicians is gathered under their names and listed alphabetically. Oral history interviews are included for some entries alongside photographs, videos, recordings, gig lists, lyrics and musical scores, press clippings, flyers, posters, weblinks and manifestos.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government

Keywords: feminism; gender; music; women

Transcripts of oral history interviews on the World Bank Group from its post-Bretton Woods beginnings to the present day. The program, which began in 1960, was restarted in 1981, and has continued from 1990 to the present day. These Bank oral history interviews are supplemented by interviews conducted for three separate projects: a history of Bank President George Woods; the 50th anniversary history of the Bank; and a history of the Staff Association. Browse by country, president, interviewee or themed collection.

Topics: Politics & Government; Work

Although not oral history, this resource provides online access to thousands of written personal testimonies about all aspects of World War Two.

Topics: People; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict

Keywords: bombing; intelligence; military history; Navy; POW; propaganda; RAF; women; 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