OHA Partners

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) is a nonprofit organization established in 1986 that maintains and expands a database of over 2,500 full-life oral histories narrated by retired U.S. diplomats and other government personnel engaged in foreign affairs.  These individuals include ambassadors, Foreign Service officers, and members of other U.S. government agencies engaged in work abroad.  In addition, ADST interviews spouses and family members of these officials.  It has created online over 800 brief “Moments” in U.S. foreign relations.  With data as far back as the 1930s and up to the present, ADST oral histories provide primary sources for research, curricula, and diplomatic training.  They chronicle legal and workplace changes and changes in how Americans prepare for U.S. government service.  ADST oral histories and related items are available at its website: adst.org, attracting over 1,000,000 views a year, and at the Library of Congress.

Audio Transcription Center has an unparalleled reputation for excellence, trust, expertise, and prestige, built by over half a century of experience and service. It is this standing that afforded us the honor of being chosen as the transcription service for 6 U.S. Presidential Oral Histories.

There’s a reason the top academic institutions, oral historians, archivists, researchers, key government agencies, financial organizations, and foundations call on the Audio Transcription Center. These clients are professionals with the highest expectations of accuracy and reliability from a professional service, as well as quick turnarounds to fit their demanding schedules, saving them their valuable time.

Our clientele understands the importance of balancing speed with the delivery of a 99% accurate transcript. Fast isn’t meaningful if a transcript isn’t accurate, and we stand behind that with our 100% guarantee of complete satisfaction.

We continue to be the industry leader in accurate and fast human transcription services, because human ingenuity and brain power still provide a transcript that is superior to artificial intelligence.

At the Audio Transcription Center, nothing about our intelligence is artificial.

Contact Michael Sesling, our Vice President, michael@audiotranscriptioncenter.com or by calling 1-857-271-2990.

The Act Concerning the Public Archives was the first law signed by California’s first governor on January 5, 1850. The California State Archives, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State, continues to serve in the spirit of those early instructions, providing a repository for the state’s permanent governmental records as well as other materials documenting California history. The California State Archives serves a wide variety of researchers whose interests range from legislative intent and public policy to genealogy and railroad history in California.

The Columbia University Center for Oral History (CCOH) is one of the world’s leading centers for the practice and teaching of oral history. CCOH achieves its mission from the union of the Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and the Columbia Center for Oral History Research (CCOHR). CCOHR, housed at INCITE, administers an ambitious research agenda with the goal to record unique life histories, document the central historical events and memories of our times, provide public programming, and to teach and do research across the disciplines.

Columbia University’s Oral History Master of Arts Program is the first program of its kind in the United States: a one-year interdisciplinary MA degree training students in oral history method and theory. At the cutting edge of the field, our faculty works across disciplines in training students to conduct ethical, rigorous, nuanced, culturally situated research. We support them in experimenting and finding new ways to use the methods and theoretical perspectives of oral history into the twenty-first century.

The History Department at Claremont Graduate University (CGU) offers three programs: the MA in History, the MA in History & Archival Studies, and the PhD in History. Faculty members specialize in U.S. and European history, with additional expertise in oral history, public history, Latin America, Mormon Studies, Oceania, and the Caribbean. The department welcomes students who wish to teach in secondary schools, community colleges, and four-year universities, as well as students who intend to pursue non-teaching careers such as public history, museum studies, or archival work. The CGU Oral History program was founded in January 1962, under the consultation of Allan Nevins, founder of the Columbia University Oral History Research Office, and the directorship of Dr. Enid H. Douglass. The interview manuscripts developed by the program are deposited in the Special Collections Room of the Honnold Library, the joint library serving The Claremont Colleges. In its early years the program concentrated on the history of Southern California. The first major project undertaken was the China Missionaries Oral History Project, funded in 1968 by the Henry Luce Foundation. Today, oral history projects range from women of color in Southern California and other local histories to Global Mormon Studies.

The Collaborative is a unique partnership between HumanitiesDC and the DC Public Library, started in 2017, that incorporates grant funding, trainings, coaching and other resources to help residents document, preserve, and celebrate the history of all DC communities through oral history.

Many of the narratives collected are preserved in the People’s Archive at the DC Public Library, and available to the public. To date, nearly 400 narratives have been collected through the Collaborative.

Duquesne’s history department offers a range of courses—at both the undergraduate and graduate levels—that cover a variety of historical periods and regions, from ancient world history to modern American history. As a liberal arts student, your opportunities to diversify your thinking through a challenging curriculum will equip you with essential skills that you—and future employers—will find invaluable. You will learn to think critically, to write with authority and to apply your knowledge of history to reimagine your world.

The Getting Word African American Oral History Project at Monticello is an ongoing, collaborative oral history project that charts the histories of families once enslaved by Thomas Jefferson. For the past thirty years, Getting Word oral historians and generations of brave and tenacious descendants have worked hand-in-hand to record their personal histories, with the steadfast resolve that their family’s histories are essential American history. Through the collaborative process of recording oral histories with generations of descendants, as well as building and maintaining relationships with descendant communities locally and nationally, Getting Word seeks to contribute to a growing national and international consciousness of the centrality of these voices in our shared American story.

Indigenous Roots Productions (IRP) is a 501(c)3 NGO established by an indigenous person to serve indigenous people. Our mission is to empower indigenous communities with the opportunity to engage in cultural expression through oral history filmmaking as well as folkloric music production. Working towards this goal, we envision the use of modern media and production resources to help preserve the planet’s diverse heritage of First Peoples. We believe that diffusing these sounds and stories around the world can bring light to our shared roots and humanity.

The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky is recognized around the world as a leader and innovator in the collection and preservation of oral histories.  The more than 13,000 oral history interviews in our collection provide a unique look into Kentucky, American, and global histories and represent a valuable resource for researchers.  The Nunn Center recorded its first interview in 1973, and the collection focuses on 20th century Kentucky history; Appalachia; agriculture; African American history; the history of education, politics, and public policy; the arts; Kentucky writers; gender; diversity; the Civil Rights Movement; veterans; the University of Kentucky; healthcare; and industries such as the coal, equine, and bourbon industries.

The Nunn Center engages individuals and communities by recording their stories and providing innovative archival access to those interviews.  You can access SPOKEdb, our online catalog/repository at https://kentuckyoralhistory.org.

You can find the latest Nunn Center-related news and announcements by following us on Twitter or Facebook, reading the Nunn Center’s blog, or listening to our Radio Features.  If you like podcasts, we have recently launched the Wisdom Project Podcast, which features interviews from the collection.  We also invite you to subscribe to our newsletter. 

For questions or to explore partnership opportunities, please contact the director of the Nunn Center, Doug Boyd.

The Margaret Walker Center is an archive and museum dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of African American history and culture. Founded as the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People by Margaret Walker in 1968, the Center seeks to honor her academic and artistic legacy through its archival collections, exhibits, and public programs.

Open to the public, the Center houses significant records like the papers of the late Margaret Walker; those of the former U.S. Secretary of Education, Roderick Paige; and a large oral history department that includes nearly 2000 interviews.  It also offers exhibit spaces that highlight the Center’s collections and the history of Jackson State University. The Oral History Division’s mission is to supplement written records by storing the accounts of African-American community members and cultural leaders.

The National Cultural Foundation (NCF) is a statutory body established by an Act of Parliament in 1983. Its mandate is to oversee the cultural landscape of Barbados. The NCF’s role revolves around the preservation of Bajan (Barbadian) cultural heritage and the production and promotion of all forms of art and culture, both tangible and intangible through developmental and commercial programmes and products. The functional spectrum ranges from, generating cultural awareness at the grassroots level to promoting cultural exchanges at an international level and implementing key research projects that privilege the voices and experiences of Bajans. In its developmental role, the Foundation uses culture as a tool for national development, fostering and supporting the various art forms and new cultural products. In its commercial role, the Foundation is responsible for the promotion, production and hosting of cultural festivals and associated events.

Key to the NCF’s research agenda is the NCF’s Oral History Programme, which was established and rebranded in 2013. It was designed to capture the cultural memories of Barbadians at home and in the Diaspora with a specific focus on elements identified within the domains of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) as defined by UNESCO: Oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage; Performing arts; Social practices, rituals and festive events; Knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; and, Traditional craftsmanship. All oral history projects are crafted in strict adherence to best practices and ethical parametres stipulated by the International Review Board (IRB) and the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, to which Barbados is signatory.

The National Public Housing Museum is the only cultural institution devoted to telling the story of public housing in the United States. Its mission is to preserve, promote, and propel the right of all people to a place where they can live and prosper — a place to call home. The Museum is national, with its home in Chicago speaking to the long history of public housing and grassroots organizing in the midwestern city. NPHM’s flagship programs include the Artist as Instigator Residency, which sponsors one artist per year who is linking arts and culture to policy change; the Entrepreneurship Hub, an innovative placemaking initiative that invests in the existing assets of national public housing communities to generate ongoing civic dialogue and stimulate equitable economic development; and the Oral History Archive and Collective. The Archive is the only collection of interviews dedicated to the preservation of narratives related to publicly-funded housing in the US, and is in the midst of piloting an online Public Archive, while the Collective is a group of public housing residents and accomplices who conduct the interviews after learning oral history methods and values through the Museum’s Beauty Turner Academy of Oral History training series. Close collaboration and co-creation with public housing communities is at the core of NPHM’s approach to all of its public programming.

The Department of History at North Carolina State University has one of the top public history programs. The Public History M.A. and Ph.D. program is designed for public history professionals who want to advance their career opportunities with doctoral degrees and for students who wish to pursue public history careers in universities or leadership positions in public history venues. Student training includes concentrations in archives, oral history, community-empowered history preservation, museum studies, and more. This training allows Our students enter careers in archives, libraries, historic sites and parks, museums, and other cultural institutions as well as government and private corporations. With over 87% employment rate in the field, our alumni have worked in the National Park system, the Smithsonian museums, the National Archives, presidential libraries, state museums and archives, university special collections, and hundreds of local public history venues. NCSU Public History is where we put history to work.

North Carolina State University is a strong supporter of the Oral History Association.

The Oral History Centre is located in historic Bryce Hall at the University of Winnipeg located on Treaty One territory, original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation. The OHC offers training in oral history and related technologies through in-class support and workshop programming, as well as provides consultation, training and support for oral history research projects. With distinct academic backgrounds and areas of technical expertise the staff at the OHC are committed to supporting oral history, digital history, and public history research with accessible and innovative outcomes.

The Oral History Lab @UPRM records, preserves, and disseminates the living history of the people of Puerto Rico with a focus on the stratified disasters of hurricanes, earthquakes, COVID-19, and the numerous sociopolitical and sociocultural issues that frame contemporary climate emergencies for frontline communities. Using decolonial and antiracist methodologies and trauma-informed approaches to oral history, our project is a nonhierarchical collaboration with mutual aid and citizen scientist organizations in the archipelago who are actively working to study and respond to disaster. Our work is rooted in the classroom, as our affiliated undergraduate courses focused on oral history and documentary filmmaking offer students the opportunity to enter their home communities to record stories from the people who matter most to them about the issues that are most important to them. The OHL was founded as a joint undertaking by the Department of English, the University Library, and the Film Certificate Program, which allows us to conceptualize projects through the interviewing, preservation, and dissemination stages. At the OHL, we undertake the dissemination of life narratives through an integrated high-tech, low-tech, and non-tech outputs strategy based upon the needs of our internal and external audiences. This holistic perspective fosters an understanding that amplifying eyewitness testimonies from disaster survivors is essential, as the qualitative, community-based datasets that these life narratives hold have the potential to impact policymakers, responders, and researchers who craft hyperlocal, local, regional, and national response and mitigation systems. We have a special focus on ethical practices and just recoveries. Access our ethical framework here.

The Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Penn State – University Park is home to more than 200,000 printed volumes, more than 25 million archival records and manuscripts, and another million photographs, maps, prints and audio-visual items. We offer primary source materials for a diverse community of researchers, who range from K-12 and Penn State students, as well as scholars around the world. We collect in a variety of disciplines, a sampling of which includes Utopian literature, science fiction, labor organization and representation, local Centre County history, and we are also home to the Penn State University Archives.

Founded in 1887, Pomona College is a national leader in liberal arts education and a close-knit community of accomplished students and teachers who seek to make a positive difference in our world. For more than a century the History Department has been a part of that unique, educational vision of the college. The History Department engages students in a study of the past from a global perspective, one that pays special effort to center the diverse experiences of humankind.  Oral History has been a part of that curriculum for more than a generation, in particular, through a variety of projects and classes focused on collecting and preserving the stories of Latines in Southern California. The department is proud to be a partner member of the OHA and does so through the support of the Ena H. Thompson fund.

People make sense of their lives through story. The South is especially rich in storytellers, and has a vibrant past of struggle and renewal. For more than forty years, the Southern Oral History Program has preserved the voices of the southern past. Our aim has been to learn the South’s history from the people who have lived it, who have staked their lives and values in it, and who are eager to supplement the historical record with the vitality of their own accounts. We work to capture priceless memories before they are lost, and present these stories to the public in creative forms.

The SOHP’s collection contains nearly 6000 interviews with men and women from across the South–from mill workers to civil rights leaders to future presidents of the United States. Made available online to the public through UNC’s renowned Southern Historical Collection, these interviews capture the vivid personalities, poignant personal stories, and behind-the-scenes decision-making that bring history to life.  We are housed in the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

The Center for Oral History at Virginia Tech (COH) brings together an interdisciplinary group of faculty, professional staff, students, and community stakeholders to provide leadership in the advancement, creation, use, and preservation of oral history and digital storytelling content, methodologies, research, and scholarship. As an institutional hub facilitating the creation and stewardship of oral history research, content, and scholarship, the COH serves primarily as a research center; but in engaging faculty and students in experiential learning opportunities with diverse groups and persons from within and beyond the university community, it also supports and provides instruction and outreach. Founded in 2021, the COH is based in the University Libraries with partners in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. The COH director works with the sponsoring dean to manage a stakeholders committee and an advisory board. The COH is not a repository for oral history collections but serves as a point of contact to identify existing repositories with collections at Virginia Tech and elsewhere.

The Museum of Civilian Voices is the world’s largest collection of stories from civilians who suffered from Russia’s war against Ukraine. The mission of the Museum is to collect, file, categorize and share the stories of Ukraine’s civilians for better understanding of life amid the war in the name of a better future

Our objectives

• To be the world’s largest archive of Stories told by Civilians who suffered from hostilities in Ukraine
• To create a reliable source of information about the life of Civilians amid the war told in the first person
• To become a unique psychotherapeutic project that will be contributing to the psychological well-being and mental health of Ukrainians traumatized by the war through sharing of their stories

Our collection

From the first days of the war in 2014, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation deployed its Humanitarian Center Here to Help in order to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Donbass. Thanks to its activities, the Center helped to save three and a half million people. Many of those people shared their stories with the Foundation.

The Oklahoma Oral History Research Program (OOHRP), founded in 2007 as part of the Oklahoma State University Library and as an arm of the OSU Center for Oklahoma Studies, is located in Stillwater, Oklahoma and provides access to over 1,700 oral history interviews. With the goal of documenting and making accessible the history of Oklahoma and OSU through oral history interviews, the OOHRP promotes the collection, preservation and analysis of interview-based research by educating students, faculty, and community members in the methods and ethical standards of oral history.

To find out more about the OOHRP’s award winning research or access thousands of fully transcribed audio/video-recorded interviews in our online collection, visit: https://library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/.

The Orange County Regional History Center is home to over 35,000 artifacts, photographs, and archival materials documenting the rich heritage of Central Florida. The collection spans seven counties and thousands of years – from the ancient past, to contemporary events shaping Central Florida’s future.

Begun in the 1970s, the oral history collection now contains more than 800 interviews and continues to grow. Among the many subjects the collection covers are the Civil Rights Movement, World War II veterans, Vietnamese refugee migration, and the Pulse Nightclub shooting.

The History Center’s staff is doing award-winning work on the forefront of contemporary collecting. In addition to actively documenting significant events, movements, changes over time, and everyday life through the lens of oral histories, the History Center creates community-based exhibitions centered on local voices and is committed to preserving Central Florida’s continually unfolding story.

The University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program is an award-winning, social-justice research center engaged in experiential learning initiatives all over the world. Our team of student researchers, interns, volunteers, and staff are dedicated to gathering, preserving, and promoting living histories of individuals from all walks of life.

Since SPOHP’s founding in 1967, we have conducted over 8,000 interviews, many of which may be found in the University of Florida’s Digital Collections. SPOHP is committed to using critical historical inquiry and digital humanities production to encourage civic engagement and dialogue between the past, present and the future. In an external review of SPOHP conducted in 2020, the Doris Duke Charitable Trust noted that, “The program’s social justice research methodologies are the focus of scholars and oral history programs across the globe.” Our mission statement is One Community, Many Voices.

The UNT Oral History Program records, transcribes, and archives oral history interviews covering a wide variety of subject matter in order to preserve local, state, and U.S. history. The Program trains UNT students in the theory and methods of oral history and conducts workshops for members of the larger community who are interested in preserving their own histories. We also have ongoing partnerships with local history societies and historical museums, local, state and national agencies, fellow colleges and universities, and many other community organizations that share our mission. The strengths of the collection include but are not limited to World War II history, with a collection of over 1,000 interviews with WWII veterans; Texas political history; Texas business history; the history of the New Deal in Texas; civil rights history; and immigration history.

The Oral History Program’s collection–held at the UW Madison Archives–currently encompasses over 2,100 interviews (more than 5000 hours) touching on all aspects of the University’s history. The program, started in 1971 as part of the now defunct University History Project, had been led since June 2007 by Troy Reeves. A significant portion of total collection were conducted as a part of special series covering subjects such as the Teaching Assistants Strike of 1970, the UW Merger, the Arboretum, and printmaking at UW since World War II. Other significant historical themes run through many of the interviews, including the Great Depression, the return of the GIs after World War II, the protests against the Vietnam War, academic freedom, and issues regarding gender, race, and sexuality. Along with gathering (and preserving) oral histories, the program also conducts outreach, including oral history presentations and workshops, both on and off campus. It also collaborates with individuals and groups, also on and off campus, interested in conducting oral history interviews or projects.

The Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program seeks to document the experiences of Wisconsin people who served in the military. The museum’s oral history collection includes over 2,894 oral history interviews with Wisconsin veterans from all conflicts, from the Spanish American War to the present day, and all branches of service.

The program is managed by a full-time oral historian with the assistance of part-time staff members, interns, volunteers, and communities. The oral history program focuses not only on creating a record of our veteran-narrators’ stories, but also on the preservation and easy accessibility of these narratives for future generations online. Click here to search the oral history collection.

Many veterans also donate other materials pertaining to their military experience to help create a well-rounded picture of their service and to help to build the museum’s educational and research collections for future generations. To donate materials click here.