LibGuides: Lowcountry Oral History Initiative (LOHI) Toolkit: Recommended Readings and Resources

Oral History Guides and Toolkits

Baylor University's Institute for Oral History: Resources
The Institute for Oral History offers a number of free resources to support beginner and advanced oral history practitioners. The guides and resources offered below will help you as you plan a new project, edit your interviews, or explore how to conduct remote interviews.
Oral History Association: Resources
Since 1966, the Oral History Association has served as the principal membership organization for people committed to the value of oral history. OHA engages with policymakers, educators, and others to help foster best practices and encourage support for oral history and oral historians.
Smithsonian Institution Archives: How to Do Oral History
Oral history is a technique for generating and preserving original, historically interesting information—primary source material—from personal recollections through planned recorded interviews. Contains suggestions for anyone looking to start recording oral histories based on best practices used in the Smithsonian Oral History Program at the Smithsonian Institution Archives.
Southern Oral History Program: Resources
The Southern Oral History Program is committed to the power of memory, voice, and storytelling that informs our evolving ideas about the people and cultures of the American South.
University of California Irvine: Oral History Toolkit
The UCI Libraries Oral History Toolkit is a free resource designed by the Special Collections and Archives Team for their community members, whether they are interested in conducting a single oral history interview or implementing a large-scale project to document a community or historical event.

Oral History Databases

Oral History and Storytelling Databases
Oral History Databases at the College of Charleston

Lowcountry Oral History Initiative
The Lowcountry Oral History Initiative (LOHI) is an online platform for the storage and discovery of oral histories collected in the lowcountry region of South Carolina. LOHI cultivates relationships between the Lowcountry Digital Library and various archival and community organizations to capture and make available audio and video recordings that document the memories of historically marginalized communities. Please note: This project started in 2023 and is in the early stages of development.
Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History
The Louie B. Gunn Center for Oral History is internationally recognized for its work in collecting and preserving oral histories. With over 17,000 oral history interviews, Nunn Center collections span an incredible breadth of topics and provide an invaluable resource to researchers across Kentucky and around the world.
Southern Oral History Program Database
The Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) Interview Database provides detailed descriptions of interviews in the SOHP Collection. The interviews in this collection were conducted or collection under the auspices of the SOHP in the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
StoryCorps
StoryCorps is committed to the idea that everyone has an important story to tell and that everyone's story matters. Since our founding in 2003, we've helped nearly 700,000 people across the country have meaningful conversations about their lives. These recordings are collected in the U.S. LIbrary of Congress and in our online archive which is now the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered.

Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
The Fortunoff Archive currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies, which are comprised of over 12,000 recorded hours of videotape. The Fortunoff Archive and its affiliates recorded the testimonies of willing individuals with first-hand experience of the Nazi persecutions, including those who were in hiding, survivors, bystanders, resistants, and liberators.
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Access to this database from off-campus will require College of Charleston credentials. If you are unaffiliated with the College of Charleston community, you will not be able to access this content.
HistoryMakers
A unique collection that provides an unprecedented and irreplaceable record of African American lives, history, and culture. Includes over 12,000 hours of video oral history interviews covering a variety of topics and fields including the arts, business, civic engagement, education, entertainment, law, medicine, and many more.
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Access to this database from off-campus will require College of Charleston credentials. If you are unaffiliated with the College of Charleston community, you will not be able to access this content.
Papers of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of the Black Power Movement
Consists of materials from the years 1913 through 1998 that document African American author and activist Amiri Baraka and were gathered by Dr. Komozi Woodard in the course of his research. Includes poetry, organizational records, print publications, articles, plays, speeches, personal correspondence, oral histories, as well as some personal records.
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Access to this database from off-campus will require College of Charleston credentials. If you are unaffiliated with the College of Charleston community, you will not be able to access this content.
Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement
The Ralph J. Bunche Oral History Collection from the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center is a unique resource for the study of the era of the American civil rights movement. Included here are transcriptions of more than 500 interviews with those who made history in the struggles for voting rights, against discrimination in housing, for the desegregation of the schools, to expose racism in hiring, in defiance of police brutality, and to address poverty in the African American communities.
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Access to this database from off-campus will require College of Charleston credentials. If you are unaffiliated with the College of Charleston community, you will not be able to access this content.