Community Oral History Toolkit

This second edition of Community Oral History Toolkit outlines the basics of oral history, how to design and manage projects, as well as guidelines on interviewing, archiving, and giving back to the community.

Updating the original five-volumes into a one-volume publication, the book covers guidelines on thinking through legal needs and ethical issues, the interview process with information on standards, tips on in-person and distance interviewing, interview preparation, question-asking techniques, documenting interview information, and, moving to the final steps, guides for preservation and ongoing access of oral histories. The authors illustrate this work with examples of worldwide community-based oral history projects and individual profiles, while describing the projects' process and outcomes. It also includes sample forms for recordkeeping and updated technology guidelines, as well as resources for community oral historians to stay ahead of changes in the field. The final chapter takes an in-depth look at six community-based projects, each unique in their place and purpose, but all based in the scaffolding of the oral history process.

Community Oral History Toolkit will be of interest to oral history, anthropology, and sociology students, as well as practicing and professional historians.

Mary Kay Quinlan Ph.D. is associate dean emerita at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications where she taught for more than twenty years and is co-author of several oral history books. She edited the Oral History Association Newsletter for thirty-three years. In 2022 she was inducted into the Marian Andersen Nebraska Women Journalists Hall of Fame, and in 2024 the Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region organization presented to her the Forrest C. Pogue Award for Excellence in Oral History.

Barbara W. Sommer M.A. has over fifty years of experience in the public history and oral history. She is a long-time member of the Oral History Association (OHA), and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums. Her publications include The Oral History Manual (1st–4th editions), Indigenous Oral History Manual: Canada and the United States (2024), and Practicing Oral History in Historical Organizations (2015).

Nancy MacKay MLIS, is a California-based oral historian, archivist, author, and educator. As an academic librarian she founded and managed the Oakland Living History Program at Mills College (now Northeastern University), where she worked as a librarian for twenty-two years. She is the author of Curating Oral Histories: From Interview to Archive, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2016) and the editor of the Routledge Practicing Oral History book series, with fourteen titles currently in print.