The Online Books Page

Oral history

Here are entered works on the technique of recording the oral recollections of persons concerning their knowledge of historical events as well as collections of such recollections. Individual oral histories are entered under the appropriate subject, e.g. United States -- Civilization -- 1918-1945. Works on the technique of recording sounds of events for historical examination as well as collections of such recordings are entered under Aural history.

See also what's at Wikipedia, your library, or elsewhere.

• History -- Methodology
• Oral biography

• Oral tradition

• Oral history -- Canada
• Oral history -- Canada, Northern
• Oral history -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
• Oral history -- Texas
• Oral history -- United States

• ...So They Understand...: Cultural Issues in Oral History (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, c2002), ed. by William S. Schneider (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)
• Never Forget Where You Came From: An Oral History of the Integration of a Rural Community (LSU doctoral dissertation, 2014), by Heather N. Stone (PDF with commentary at lsu.edu)
• Jewish Memories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), by Lucette Valensi and Nathan Wachtel, trans. by Barbara Harshav (HTML at UC Press)
• Enduring Voices: Oral Histories of the U.S. Army Experience in Afghanistan, 2003-2005 (Washington: US Army Center of Military History, 2008), ed. by Christopher N. Koontz (PDF with commentary at US Army CMH)
• Living With Stories: Telling, Re-Telling, and Remembering (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, c2008), ed. by William S. Schneider (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)
• "Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are": An Ethnohistorical Study of the African-American Community on the Lands of the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, 1865-1918 (Williamsburg, VA: William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research, 1992), by Bradley M. McDonald, Kenneth E. Stuck, and Kathleen Joan Bragdon (page images at HathiTrust)

• Genetic Resources, Justice and Reconciliation: Canada and Global Access and Benefit Sharing (Cambridge, UK et al.: Cambridge University Press, 2019), ed. by Chidi Oguamanam (HTML and PDF files with commentary at Cambridge University Press)

• Mining and Communities in Northern Canada: History, Politics, and Memory (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2015), ed. by Arn Keeling and John Sandlos (PDF files at University of Calgary)

• U. S. Army Guide to Oral History (Washington: Center of Military History, 2006), by Stephen J. Lofgren (HTML and PDF at US Army CMH)

• Oral History: Techniques and Procedures (Washington: Center of Military History, 1992), by Stephen E. Everett (illustrated HTML at af.mil)

• Houston Reflections: Art in the City, 1950s, 60s, and 70s (2007), by Sarah C. Reynolds (HTML with commentary at cnx.org)

• In Our Own Voices: Conducting Life History Interviews with American Jewish Women (Brookline, MA: Jewish Women's Archive, c2005), ed. by Jayne K. Guberman (PDF with commentary at jwa.org)

Items below (if any) are from related and broader terms.

• Imagined States: Nationalism, Utopia, and Longing in Oral Cultures (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, c2001), ed. by Luisa Del Giudice and Gerald Porter
  • PDF with commentary at usu.edu
  • page images at HathiTrust
• Oral Literature in the Digital Age: Archiving Orality and Connecting with Communities (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, c2013), ed. by Mark Turin, Claire Wheeler, and Eleanor Wilkinson (PDF and HTML with commentary at openbookpublishers.com)
• Living With Stories: Telling, Re-Telling, and Remembering (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, c2008), ed. by William S. Schneider (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)

• Oral Literature in Africa (second edition; Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2012), by Ruth H. Finnegan
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • multiple formats with commentary at Open Book Publishers

• Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic Tradition (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1995), by Dwight Fletcher Reynolds (multiple formats with commentary at Cornell Open)

• Searching for Sharing: Heritage and Multimedia in Africa (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, c2017), ed. by Daniela Merolla and Mark Turin (multiple formats with commentary at Open Book Publishers)

• When Our Words Return: Writing, Hearing, and Remembering Oral Traditions of Alaska and the Yukon (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1995), ed. by Phyllis Morrow and William S. Schneider (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)

• When Our Words Return: Writing, Hearing, and Remembering Oral Traditions of Alaska and the Yukon (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1995), ed. by Phyllis Morrow and William S. Schneider (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)

• The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry: Its Character and Implications (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c1978), by Michael Zwettler (PDF at Ohio State)

• Idle Talk: Gossip and Anecdote in Traditional China (Berkeley et al.: Global, Area, and International Archive; University of California Press, c2014), ed. by Jack Wei Chen and David Schaberg (page images and PDF at escholarship.org)

• Oral Literature in the Digital Age: Archiving Orality and Connecting with Communities (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, c2013), ed. by Mark Turin, Claire Wheeler, and Eleanor Wilkinson (PDF and HTML with commentary at openbookpublishers.com)

• Folk-Lore of Shakespeare (London: Griffith and Farran, ca. 1883), by T. F. Thiselton-Dyer (HTML with commentary at sacred-texts.com)

• Popular Romances of the West of England, ed. by Robert Hunt (HTML at sacred-texts.com)

• Tradition Today: The E-Journal of the Centre for English Traditional Heritage (full serial archives)

• Stories From Quechan Oral Literature (in Quechan and English; Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, c2014), ed. by Abraham M. Halpern and Amy Miller (multiple formats with commentary at Open Book Publishers)

• Memory and Re-Creation in Troubadour Lyric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), by Amelia Eileen Van Vleck (HTML at UC Press)

• The Artistry of the Homeric Simile (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Library and Dartmouth College Press; Published by University Press of New England, c2009), by William C. Scott
  • multiple formats at Dartmouth Digital Publishing
  • PDF files with commentary at Project MUSE
• Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1997), by Egbert J. Bakker (multiple formats with commentary at Cornell Open)
• The Oral Nature of the Homeric Simile (Leiden: Brill, 1974), by William C. Scott (multiple formats at Dartmouth Digital Publishing)
• Homeric Questions, by Gregory Nagy (HTML at stoa.org)

• The Three Twins: The Telling of a South Indian Folk Epic (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, c1982), by Brenda E. F. Beck (multiple formats at ACLS Humanities E-Book)

• Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015), ed. by Francesca Orsini and Katherine Butler Schofield (multiple formats with commentary at Open Book Publishers)

• Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press, c1996), by Kenneth M. George (HTML at UC Press)

• When We Began, There Were Witchmen: An Oral History from Mount Kenya (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), by Jeffrey Fadiman (HTML at UC Press)

• Native American Oral Traditions: Collaboration and Interpretation (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, c2001), ed. by Larry Evers and Barre Toelken (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)

• Oral Tradition (1986-) (full serial archives)

• Highland Superstitions, Connected With the Druids, Fairies, Witchcraft, Second-sight, Hallowe'en, Sacred Wells and Lochs, with Several Curious Instances of Highland Customs and Beliefs (Stirling, Scotland: E. MacKay; London: Gibbings and Co., 1901), by Alexander Macgregor
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• Folk Tales and Fairy Lore in Gaelic and English, Collected From Oral Tradition (Edinburgh: J. Grant, 1910), by J. MacDougall, ed. by George Calder
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland: Tales and Traditions Collected Entirely from Oral Sources (Glasgow: J. Maclehose and Sons, 1902), by John Gregorson Campbell
  • Gutenberg text
  • page images at Google; US access only

• Storytelling in Northern Zambia: Theory, Method, Practice and Other Necessary Fictions (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, c2013), by Robert Cancel (PDF and HTML with commentary at openbookpublishers.com)

• Following Tradition: Folklore in the Discourse of American Culture (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, c1998), by Simon J. Bronner (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)
• American Indian Rhetorics of Survivance: Word Medicine, Word Magic (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c2006), ed. by Ernest Stromberg, contrib. by Matthew Dennis, Patricia Bizzell, Angela Pulley Hudson, Malea D. Powell, Janna Knittel, Holly Lynn Baumgartner, Karen A. Redfield, Robin Derosa, Anthony G. Murphy, Ellen L. Arnold, Peter D'Errico, and Richard Clark Eckert (page images at Pitt)

• The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, c2003), by Barre Toelken (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)

• The Artistry of the Homeric Simile (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Library and Dartmouth College Press; Published by University Press of New England, c2009), by William C. Scott
  • multiple formats at Dartmouth Digital Publishing
  • PDF files with commentary at Project MUSE
• Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1997), by Egbert J. Bakker (multiple formats with commentary at Cornell Open)
• The Oral Nature of the Homeric Simile (Leiden: Brill, 1974), by William C. Scott (multiple formats at Dartmouth Digital Publishing)
• Homeric Questions, by Gregory Nagy (HTML at stoa.org)

• Writing History in the Digital Age (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), ed. by Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty (HTML with commentary at digitalculture.org)
• The Web as History: Using Web Archives to Understand the Past and the Present (London: UCL Press, c2017), ed. by Niels Brügger and Ralph Schroeder (PDF with commentary at UCL Press)
• Four Histories About Early Dutch Football, 1910-1920: Constructing Discourses (London: University College London Press, 2016), by Nicholas Piercey
  • PDF and HTML with commentary at UCL Press
  • PDF files at JSTOR
• Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web (2005), by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig (HTML with commentary at gmu.edu)

More items available under broader and related terms at left.