Educators have unprecedented access to oral histories, thanks to the Internet.

English professor Jill Goodman Gould and instruction librarian Gail Gradowski, both of Santa Clara University, will examine the way video oral histories can be used and integrated in various university courses during a talk at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 20, in University of Oregon's Knight Library Browsing Room.

A wide range of oral histories is readily available to educators, from small collections such as Ball State University’s video interviews of 40 members of the U.S. Army’s First Infantry Division from the Vietnam War to large archives of oral histories including the Densho Digital Archive of over 600 video interviews documenting the Japanese American internment during WWII.

Goodman Gould and Gradowski will share their own experiences using a videotape collection of Holocaust testimonies in an advanced writing course at Santa Clara University. They will survey a range of other university courses in various disciplines that currently use online interviews and testimonies as part of their curriculum.

The variety is already impressive and growing quickly, along with links to educational tools and supporting resources. This month's talk is considered an opportunity for members of the UO community to learn about the wealth of oral history material available for teaching in multiple disciplines.

- from UO Libraries