Research Guide, COM 403 Oral History

Research Help

• Citing Your Sources
• Ask a Reference Librarian
• COM 403 Syllabus

Assignment

• Oral History Booklet
• Oral History Analysis

How To's

Books

• Electronic Books: Found in CLICnet or NetLibrary database
  • The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Your Family History
    • Chapter 2 (pgs. 24-28) - Why do this?
    • Chapter 9 (pgs. 125-128) - Interviewing strategies
  • --So They Understand: Cultural Issues in Oral History
  • United States History: A Selective Guide to Information Sources
    • Locations of oral history collections
• Print books
  • Ethnicity and Family Therapy, R362.208900973 Et385M3 2005

Websites

• Oral History Association
• Oral History Evaluation Guidelines: Ethical considerations involved 
• Oral History WebQuest
• Library of Congress: American Memory
  • American Folklife Center: How to collect information on cultural heritage through traditional cultural expressions such as music, stories, and games + examples
  • Using Oral History: Guidelines for oral history interviews
• Regional Oral History Office: Found under resources tab - Oral history tips, interview questions, and one minute guide to oral history 
• Oral History in your Community
• Countdown to Millennium - An Oral History Collection Project: Background to methodology of oral narratives and why they are important
• WorldCat Genealogy: Resources available in libraries throughout world and tutorials

Sources for Genealogy

Books

• German Genealogy Society Collection (Located in library reference collection)
  • Passenger Lists, R929.373 P266f
    • Passenger arrival to the US & Canada information from the 17th-19th Centuries
  • Passenger Arrivals in the Ports of New York, Philadelphia, and more
  • General: How to do genealogy in the R929.1 section

Websites

• Minnesota Historical Society
  • People finder with death/birth cirtificates; veterans grave index, and family history resources
• Ellis Island
  • Getting Started information
  • Immigration records
  • View images of ship documents, where they came from, whom they were with at the time of entry, who was meeting them at their destination
  • See also Passenger Lists in Concordia Library reference collection
• Cyndislist
  • List of genealogy sites on the internet
  • Includes links to African-American DNA Roots Project
• Family Search: Sponsored by the Mormon church
• GenealogyBank: Historical newspapers from 1690-1980, includes obituaries
• USGenWeb Project
  • Free genealogical research websites for each state.  Various ongoing projects include: African American Project, Kidz (for children), church & marriage records, obituary & tombstone transcriptions
• Ancestry.com
  • Includes free access to the Social Security Death Index
• Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database
  • Documents slave trade voyages that left England from 1514 to 1866

Supplementary Contextual Information

Websites

• History Channel: Includes - What happened onyour birthday; American citizenship quiz; Great American Speeches

Selected Periodicals (Use for articles on genealogy and history)

• Minnesota History: Minnesota Historical Society, print only
• Magazine of History: Organization of American Historians, print only
• Oral History Review: Oral History Association, online/JSTOR

Use Journal Finder/Article Linker to find a specific journal or to browse periodicals by subject area

Selected Databases
(Use for supplemental, contextual information on historical, ethnicity, social, political events; diaries from daily life; pictures of the times, people, & places)

• NetLibrary: See Books section for specific books
• American Memory: Library of Congress
• Hmong Resource Center
• In the First Person: Diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories
• JSTOR: Arts & Sciences collection for various ethnic studies, folklore, history
• Minnesota Reflections: Digital collection
• African American Registery: Largest African American history website

Books

• Reference Books at Concordia: Use for extra & interesting information
  • St. Paul City Directory: (1930, 66, 77, 78, 88), R917.76581 F759
  • Dictionary of American Family Names, R929.40973 D5614 
  • Today's the Day: Do you know what happened the day you were born? R940 B358t
• Print Books on Reserve
  • Ethnicity and Family Therapy
  • Voices of Rondo

Examples of Oral Histories

Websites

• Library of Congress: Use American Memory to find - 
  • Oral histories (e.g. slave narratives)
  • Audio, visual, video collections
  • Spoken Word collection

Books

• Voices of Rondo: Oral Histories of Saint Paul's Historic Black Community, 305.896073776
• Long Hard Road: American POW's During WWII, 940.547208913 Sa997 2007

Faculty Oral History Projects

• Dr. Hillmer, Hmong Oral History Project
• Dr. Saylor, POW Oral History Project
• Dr. Tesch, Genealogy/Family History