Oral History in Your Library: Create Shelf Space for Community Voice

Discover the true value and exciting possibilities of oral history in the library: learn new and compelling ways to engage your patrons by sharing personal and community history with them.

Have you thought about creating a collection to capture the experiences of your community? Perhaps you already have an oral history collection, but it’s gathering dust. In either case, this book can help. After outlining what it means to effectively create oral history content, the author discusses how to establish public access to your collection, how to promote the content to your community, and how to use oral history in your library programs. Collaborating with other organizations, working with volunteers, and funding initiatives are a few of the other topics covered.

Brimming with ideas and practical advice, the guide is meant to inspire and empower, taking the hassle out of oral history and replacing it with embracing oral history’s power and the tools to bring it into your library. If you have an oral history collection, this book will help you to maximize its potential. If you don’t have one, this book will show you how your library could benefit from one, what it can help your library to accomplish, and how to get started. If you’re seeking a path to community engagement, start here.

Shows librarians how to realize the potential of oral history collections

Goes beyond content creation to cover creating access to and promoting oral history as well as using it to enhance library programming

Provides public librarians a targeted way to engage with their communities