Managing a Community Oral History Project

The third book in the five-volume Community Oral History Toolkit takes the planning steps outlined in Volume 2 and puts them into action. It provides the practical details for turning your plans into reality and establishes the basis for guiding your project through the interviews to a successful conclusion. Project managers are given concrete, useful advise on how to manage people, money, technology, publicity, and administrative tasks from the beginning to the end of the project. Volume 3 outlines details for developing the necessary forms to properly administer a community oral history project (sample forms provided). The authors advise how to recruit volunteers and interviewees and provide helpful tips for conducting thorough interview and transcription training sessions and how to make arrangements for the life and safety of the project one the interviews are complete.

Barbara W. Sommer, M.A., has over twenty-five years of experience in the oral history field. She has been principal investigator and director of more than twenty major oral history projects and has taught at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Vermilion Community College. She is a long-time member of the Oral History Association and is author of many key publications in the field, including, with Mary Kay Quinlan, The Oral History Manual, 2nd ed. (AltaMira Press, 2009) and with Charles E. Trimble and Mary Kay Quinlan, The American Indian Oral History Manual: Making Many Voices Heard (Left Coast Press, Inc., 2008). Her award-winning book Hard Work and a Good Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2008) draws on oral history interviews about the Civilian Conservation Corps, as does her essay, “’We Had This Opportunity:’ African Americans and the Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota,” in The State We’re In: Reflections on Minnesota History, Annette Atkins and Deborah L. Miller, eds, (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2010). She also is the author of a history of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln based on oral history (University of Nebraska Press, 2012). She holds a bachelor’s degree from Carleton College and a master’s degree in history from the University of Minnesota.

Nancy MacKay, MLIS, has been straddling the line between libraries and oral history for more than twenty years. As a librarian she has worked with special collections, cataloging, and music in various academic settings. As an oral historian she teaches, consults, advises, and writes about oral history, especially oral history and archives. She directed the oral history program at Mills College, from 2001-2011, and currently teaches library science and oral history at San Jose State University. Current research interests include the condition of oral histories in repositories and a model for a metadata scheme for oral histories. Nancy is the author of Curating Oral Histories (Left Coast Press, Inc., 2007) and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mary Kay Quinlan, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the College of Journalism and Mass Communication. She has held positions as Baltimore Sun Distinguished Lecturer and William Randolph Hearst Visiting Professional at the University of Maryland, and has served as president of the National Press Club. She is editor of the Oral History Association Newsletter and co-author with Barbara Sommer of The Oral History Manual (AltaMira Press, 2002, 2009), Native American Veterans Oral History Manual (Nebraska Foundation for the Preservation of Oral History, 2005), and Discovering Your Connections to History (AASLH, 2000). She is also a co-author with Sommer and Charles E. Trimble of The American Indian Oral History Manual: Making Many Voices Heard (Left Coast Press, Inc., 2008).