oral history

This article is about the historical discipline; see Oral tradition for the oral transmission of historical information. See Oral history preservation for information on protecting oral histories.Oral history is a method of historical documentation, using interviews with living survivors of the time being investigated. Contemporary oral history involves recording or transcribing eyewitness accounts of historical events. Some anthropologists started collecting recordings (at first especially of Native American folklore) on phonograph cylinders in the late 19th century. In the 1930s the Works Progress Administration (WPA) sent out interviewers to collect accounts from various groups, including surviving witnesses of the American Civil War, Slavery, and other major historical events. The Library of Congress also began recording traditional American music and folklore onto acetate discs. With the development of audio tape recordings after World War II, the task of oral historians became easier.
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