Finding Oral Histories Available Online
1,700 oral history interviews in the Mansfield Library's Archives and Special Collections are available online via ScholarWorks. Most of them have been transcribed so you can listen to the audio, or read a print version of it. The audio and / or transcripts on ScholarWorks may be downloaded for free.
To learn more about using ScholarWorks, watch this short video.
The oral history interviews available on ScholarWorks are organized alphabetically by the title of the specific oral history project or collection. The stand-alone oral histories have also been pulled together by topic such as Montana Dude Ranches, Montana Communities, Religion in Montana, Settlers, Homesteaders, Ranchers, and Farmers, Montana Educators, Land Use, Forestry, and Conservation, and Montana Businesses.
To find individual interviews, click on the title of the project or collection in ScholarWorks. Then you will see a description of the interview, and can download the audio and / or transcript.
Finding Oral Histories in Print
There are a number of published oral history volumes at the Mansfield Library. While the topics vary and sound recordings typically don't accompany the volume, oral histories in print, which include excerpts or full transcripts of interviews, can help you access primary sources on a topic not covered by oral history interviews held at the Mansfield Library. You can find them in OneSearch by keyword searching your topic and the term "oral history". You can further limit your search to "Books (Print)" or "Books (Electronic)" in the Resource Type field. The example below was located in OneSearch by doing the following:
- Limiting the search to UM Physical Items.
- Searching the terms "World War", "atrocities", and "oral history".
- Further limiting the Resource Type to "Books (Print)".
The Order Has Been Carried Out by Call Number: 940.5345 P843oISBN: 1403962081Publication Date: 2004-01-30On March 24, 1944, Nazi occupation forces in Rome killed 335 unarmed civilians in retaliation for a partisan attack the day before. Portelli has crafted an eloquent, multi-voiced oral history of the massacre, of its background and its aftermath. The moving stories of the victims, the women and children who survived and carried on, the partisans who fought the Nazis, and the common people who lived through the tragedies of the war together paint a many-hued portrait of one of the world's most richly historical cities.
Portelli, A. (2004). The Order Has Been Carried Out. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Locating Oral Histories by Keyword
Thinking of the right keywords when you're searching can help you locate materials more easily. If you're having difficulty finding good information, or any information, it may be because you aren't using the right keywords. Before searching for oral history interviews in the library catalog or on ScholarWorks brainstorm a variety of keywords for your topic. This is easier if you write down your thesis statement and locate the major terms in it. Then brainstorm as many ways as you can to say those terms. For example, if your topic is on homesteading in Montana, you might consider the following keywords: homesteading or homesteaders; poineers; settlers; early settlement; ranchers or ranch life; farmers or farm life.
More Keyword Tips
- To narrow or expand your search, combine keywords using the search limiters AND, OR, NOT, which will narrow or expand your search.
- Put quotation marks around a phrase, such as "ranch life" so that the library catalog will look for oral histories with the subject of ranch life, not oral histories that contain the words "ranch" and "life". There are a lot of oral history interviews with the word "life" that have nothing to do with ranches or homesteads.
- Remember that word spellings and usage change over time. If you're looking for interviews about the Kootenai tribe, try both "Kootenai" and "Kutenai". Otherwise, you might miss interviews described with one spelling of the word, but not the other.