A How-To Oral History Handbook

People, Places and Culture Workshop in New Perlican.

As part of my work with the Collective Memories Project I have been writing and compiling a how-to guide to oral history projects. The Collective Memories Project is an initiative of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Office of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, with funding provided by the Department of Children, Seniors, and Social Development. The main goal of this project is to invite seniors to record their stories and memories for archiving and sharing.

A big part of this project has involved oral history interviews and projects with towns across the province as well as Memory Mug Ups and People, Places, and Culture Workshops. Our office has also worked with communities to digitize materials previously collected by towns and organizations. The new interviews as well as the digitized archived collections can be found on Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative at collections.mun.ca

The third major goal of this project was the oral history guide or toolkit for communities wishing to record and collect their own stories at the local level. This guide will help you start planning your project!

It offers you tips and tricks on how to do interviews, and will help you decide what to do with the materials you've collected to make them publicly accessible. The guide offers useful links guidelines from organizations across Canada and the United States and includes a How-To Guide for the Memory Mug Ups and the People, Places, and Culture Workshops we have been running here at the Foundation.

Click here to find the Oral History Handbook!

~Terra Barrett