Connect and Communicate Presents: Oral History 101 

Creating an Oral History Program for Your Library 

Presented by Heidi Abbey Moyer

December, 9, 2021 at 11:00 am EST

Registration Link

Interested in preserving the COVID-19 experiences, perspectives, and voices of the people in your library community? This session will help you learn how to kick-start a successful oral history program. The presenter will cover the following elements central to successful oral history programs: 1) defining purposes, short- and long-term goals, scope, and themes or topics; 2) respecting budget and staffing constraints; 3) learning best practices for conducting interviews, ethical and legal guidelines, and resources available from the international oral history profession; 4) selecting audio and/or visual equipment and software; 5) identifying potential interviewees; 6) developing consistent documentation for interview questions, legal release forms, guidelines, and transcribing interviews; 7) publishing and marketing your program to users; and 8) establishing assessment and preservation strategies to ensure for the long-term accessibility of the program.

Heidi Abbey Moyer is the Archivist and Humanities Reference Librarian, Archives and Special Collections, Penn State Harrisburg Library.

As a reminder, the Zoom link will be sent approximately 48 hours before the session. We will mute participants on entry into the Zoom room. Session will be recorded and available on YouTube after the session. We will enable Zoom’s Live Transcription feature during the session.