Email the Division
Individual Unit Contact Information:
Special Collections, 6th Floor Wilson Library, speccoll@wwu.edu, 360-650-3193
University Archives and Records Management, Goltz-Murray Archives Building, university.archives@wwu.edu, 360-650-3124
Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Goltz-Murray Archives Building, cpnws@wwu.edu, 360-650-7534
Division Website:
This guide suggests useful resources for finding and studying oral histories. It focuses primarily on resources available through Archives & Special Collections, a division of Western Libraries which includes the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, University Archives & Records Management, and Special Collections.
To learn more about primary source collections at Western and beyond, check out the "Archives & Special Collections: Primary Sources for Teaching, Learning & Research" and "Finding Historical Primary Sources Beyond Western's Archives & Special Collections" video tutorials.
Please contact Archives & Special Collections if you have questions or need assistance.
Western Libraries Archives & Special Collections aims to contextualize its archival and special collections in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the resources we manage. However, for a variety of reasons, users may encounter offensive or harmful content or language in our collections and/or our descriptive and teaching tools. When we discover problematic language created by an archivist, review it for possible revision. Information derived from the original archival material may be retained if it provides additional context about the people who created it.
Staff are currently addressing offensive or harmful content and language as part of routine description work. In addition, we encourage users to provide feedback to help us tackle this issue. We recognize that terminology evolves over time and that efforts to create respectful and inclusive practices must be ongoing.
If you encounter problematic content or descriptions in our collections or descriptive and teaching tools, please contact us to recommend a correction, the replacement of a term, or the inclusion of additional context.
Contact archives.speccoll@wwu.edu or (360) 650-7534.
Definition n. ~ 1. An interview that records an individual's personal recollections of the past and historical events. – 2. The audio or video recordings, transcripts, and other materials that capture and are associated with such an interview.
Citations †156 (Klopfer 2001, p. 112): Documents described as oral histories range from personal reminiscences to structured interviews to recordings of contemporary thoughts or events saved for posterity. The arrangement of oral histories also range from raw tapes to edited tapes, translations, transcripts, re-wordings, syntheses and interpretations.
[Definition from Richard Peace-Moses, A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology. Society of American Archivists, 2005 (accessed 2011 April 25)].
Oral histories may be recorded and stored using a wide variety of media and formats, including magnetic reel-to-reel tape, audio or mini-audio cassette, mini-discs, CD, DVD, mp3 and WAV files. In some cases, Heritage Resources staff may have to make special arrangements for equipment to access audio/audio-visual recordings.