Table Of ContentPA L G R AV E
Series Editors: David P. Cline and Natalie Fousekis
Founding Series Editors: Linda Shopes and Bruce M. Stave
Editorial Board
Rina Benmayor Alexander Freund
Division of Humanities and Communication & Department of History &
Oral History and Community Memory Archive Oral History Centre
California State University Monterey Bay University of Winnipeg
United States Canada
Indira Chowdhury Anna Green
Archival Resources for Contemporary History College of Humanities
India University of Exeter
United Kingdom
Pilar Dominguez
Department of Historical Sciences Paula Hamilton
Division of Political Thought and Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences &
Social Movements Australian Centre for Public History
Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University of Technology Sydney
España Australia
Sean Field Paul Ortiz
Centre for Popular Memory Department of History &
Department of Historical Studies Samuel Proctor Oral History Program
University of Cape Town University of Florida
South Africa United States
The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in
Rome, by Alessandro Portelli (2003)
Sticking to the Union: An Oral History of the Life and Times of Julia Ruuttila, by Sandy
Polishuk (2003)
To Wear the Dust of War: From Bialystok to Shanghai to the Promised Land, an Oral
History, by Samuel Iwry, edited by L. J. H. Kelley (2004)
Education as My Agenda: Gertrude Williams, Race, and the Baltimore Public Schools, by
Jo Ann Robinson (2005)
Remembering: Oral History Performance, edited by Della Pollock (2005)
Postmemories of Terror: A New Generation Copes with the Legacy of the “Dirty War,” by
Susana Kaiser (2005)
Growing Up in The People’s Republic: Conversations between Two Dau ghters of China’s
Revolution, by Ye Weili and Ma Xiaodong (2005)
Life and Death in the Delta: African American Narratives of Violence, Resilience, and
Social Change, by Kim Lacy Rogers (2006)
Creating Choice: A Community Responds to the Need for Abortion and Birth Control,
1961–1973, by David P. Cline (2006)
Voices from This Long Brown Land: Oral Recollections of Owens Valley Lives and
Manzanar Pasts, by Jane Wehrey (2006)
Radicals, Rhetoric, and the War: The University of Nevada in the Wake of Kent State, by
Brad E. Lucas (2006)
The Unquiet Nisei: An Oral History of the Life of Sue Kunitomi Embrey, by Diana
Meyers Bahr (2007)
Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City,
by Jane LaTour (2008)
Iraq’s Last Jews: Stories of Daily Life, Upheaval, and Escape from Modern Babylon, edited
by Tamar Morad, Dennis Shasha, and Robert Shasha (2008)
Soldiers and Citizens: An Oral History of Operation Iraqi Freedom from the Battlefield
to the Pentagon, by Carl Mirra (2008)
Overcoming Katrina: African American Voices from the Crescent City and Beyond, by
D’Ann R. Penner and Keith C. Ferdinand (2009)
Bringing Desegregation Home: Memories of the Struggle toward School Integration in
Rural North Carolina, by Kate Willink (2009)
I Saw It Coming: Worker Narratives of Plant Closings and Job Loss, by Tracy E. K’Meyer
and Joy L. Hart (2010)
Speaking History: Oral Histories of the American Past, 1865-Present, by Sue Armitage
and Laurie Mercier (2010)
Surviving Bhopal: Dancing Bodies, Written Texts, and Oral Testimonials of Women in the
Wake of an Industrial Disaster, by Suroopa Mukherjee (2010)
Living with Jim Crow: African American Women and Memories of the Segregated South,
by Anne Valk and Leslie Brown (2010)
Gulag Voices: Oral Histories of Soviet Incarceration and Exile, by Jehanne M. Gheith
and Katherine R. Jolluck (2011)
Detained without Cause: Muslims’ Stories of Detention and Deportation in America after
9/11, by Irum Shiekh (2011)
Soviet Communal Living: An Oral History of the Kommunalka, by Paola Messana
(2011)
No Room of Her Own: Women’s Stories of Homelessness, Life, Death, and Resistance, by
Desiree Hellegers (2011)
Oral History and Photography, edited by Alexander Freund and Alistair Thomson
(2011)
Place, Writing, and Voice in Oral History, edited by Shelley Trower (2011)
Oral History, Community, and Displacement: Imagining Memories in Post-Apartheid
South Africa, by Sean Field (2012)
Second Wind: Oral Histories of Lung Transplant Survivors, by Mary Jo Festle (2012)
Displaced: The Human Cost of Development and Resettlement, by Olivia Bennett and
Christopher McDowell (2012)
Exodus to Shanghai: Stories of Escape from the Third Reich, by Steve Hochstadt
(2012)
Oral History in Southeast Asia: Memories and Fragments, edited by Kah Seng Loh,
Stephen Dobbs, and Ernest Koh (2013)
Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice, edited by Anna Sheftel
and Stacey Zembrzycki (2013)
Sharecropper’s Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, and
the African American Song Tradition, by Michael K. Honey (2013)
Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China, by Rowena He
(2014)
Black Leaders on Leadership: Conversations with Julian Bond, by Phyllis Leffler
(2014)
Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, and Engagement, edited by Douglas
A. Boyd and Mary A. Larson (2014)
The Reunification of Germany: George Bush, Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the
Diplomacy that Brought Down the Berlin Wall, by Alexander von Plato (2015)
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Oral History and
Digital Humanities
Voice, Access, and Engagemen t
Edited by
Douglas A. Boyd and Mary A. Larson
ORAL HISTORY AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES
Copyright © Douglas A. Boyd and Mary A. Larson, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-32200-5
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-137-32201-2 ISBN 978-1-137-32202-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137322029
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Contributors xi
Preface xvii
INTRODUCTION 1
Douglas A. Boyd and Mary A. Larson
Part I Orality/Aura lity
CHAPTER 1
Oral History in the Age of Digital Possibilities 19
William Schneider
CHAPTER 2
Why Do We Call It Oral History? Refocusing
on Orality/Aurality in the Digital Age 35
Sherna Berger Gluck
CHAPTER 3
Adventures in Sound: Aural History, the Digital Revolution,
and the Making of “ ‘I Can Almost See the Lights of Home’:
A Field Trip to Harlan County, Kentucky” 53
Charles Hardy III
CHAPTER 4
“I Just Want to Click on It to Listen”: Oral History Archives,
Orality, and Usability 77
Douglas A. Boyd
Part II Discovery and Discourse
CHAPTER 5
Beyond the Transcript: Oral History as Pedagogy 99
Marjorie L. McLellan
viii / Contents
CHAPTER 6
Notes from the Field: Digital History and Oral History 119
Gerald Zahavi
CHAPTER 7
Densho: The Japanese American gLaecy Project 133
Tom Ikeda
CHAPTER 8
Deconstruction Whiot ut Destruction: Creatgi n
Metadata for Oral History in a Digilt Wa orld 145
Elinor Mazé
CHAPTER 9
“We All Begin with a Story”: Discovery and Discourse in
the Digital Realm 157
Mary Larson
Part III Oral History an d Digital
Humanities Perspectives
CHAPTER 10
Swimming in the Exaflood: Oral History as Information in
the Digital Age 175
Stephen M. Sloan
CHAPTER 11
[o]ral [h]istory and the [d]igital [h]umanities 187
Dean Rehberger
Index 199
Figures
1.1 S c r hoe etho n wss ihen g uf sthpye s l io wcl pla a pfrome r
the Russian Bishop’s House as virtual wallpaper for the
related website 28
1.2 A page from the Dog Mushing in Alaska Project Jukebox,
showing a contextual statement at the top, topical navigation
at left, the audio player in the center, and the transcript to the right 29
1.3 A screenshot from the Pioneer Aviators Project Jukebox,
showing already extant film excerpts that were digitized and
included in the project 30
2.1 Screenshot of VOAHA, Women’s History Series List 40
2.2 Screenshot of VOAHA, Interviewee List of (Suffragists) 40
2.3 Screenshot of VOAHA, Interviewee 40
2.4 Screenshot of VOAHA, Interview (Bio) 41
2.5 Screenshot of VOAHA, Individual Segment 41
3.1 “I Can Almost See the Lights of Home”: Introduction 54
3.2 “I Can Almost See the Lights of Home”: Second Movement 66
3.3 “I Can Almost See the Lights of Home”: Contents 69
7.1 Screenshot from Densho visual history collection 139
7.2 S c r e e n sg ho ot th es rh ov wi is nu a l h i s t o r y c o l l e c t i o n s i n
t h e D e vne s h o A r c h i 140
7.3 S c r e e n sg hp ohgtr o a tspohh o wf ri on mge DC oo r l ol te hc et ai o Ln a n
f r o mph ot th oe / d o c u m e n t c o l l e c 1t 4i o0 n s i n t h e D e n s h o A r c h i v e
7.4 S c r e e ng s t ho op t i cg usas, ti nl f oo oo kd i ni n a W o r l d W a r I I
c o n c e n t r a t i o n c a m p . T h e t a b l e a t t h e b o t t o m s h o w s p h o t o s ,
d o c u m e n t s , a n d v i c d e o i n t 1e 4r 0v i e w c l i p s o n t h i s t o p i
9 1. S c r e e n sg ht oh te s mh ao iwn i nm e n ku f o r t h e C h i p p - I k p i k p u
a n d M e a jde ec t R Ji uv ke er sb o Px r ow i st h 1 v6 a0 r i o u s a v e n u e s o f a c c e s
9 2. S c r e e n sg hh oo t w s Eh logrdwa eiprnhs s’ wp he ro et o u s e d i n
t h e C h i p p - I k p i kje pc ut gk a at ase n wada y M e a d e R i v e r s p r o
t o a gc oc er as sl s i hn i s t o r i e 1 6 0
9 3. S c r e e n sg ht oh te su hs oe w oi nf m a p s a s a n e n t r y p o i n t i n t o
th e C h i p p - I k p i k p u ks a n d M1 e6 a 0d e R i v e r s o r a l h i s t o r i e
