May 2023
Executive Summary
The first purpose of this document is to inform and assist college and university administrators, department chairs, promotion and tenure committees, and/or other employers by: 1) developing an appreciation for the intellectual effort, research, expertise, and time required for conducting successful oral history projects; 2) demonstrating the value and unique work that oral historians do and the scholarly contributions that they make; and 3) providing points to consider when evaluating professional or academic oral historians for promotion, tenure, or other review purposes. The second purpose of this document is to assist oral historians in understanding how they can better contextualize their contributions within their organizations’ or employers’ rubrics for evaluation.
The OHA’s Guidelines for Evaluating and Valuing Oral History Task Force (Mary Larson and Leslie McCartney co-chairs with Michael Franklin) developed this document based on the earlier work of former Executive Director Cliff Kuhn and the Oral History as Scholarship Task Force. These guidelines were adopted by OHA Council on January 9, 2023, can be found on our website HERE, and can also be found in PDF format HERE.