Community Service Resources & Best Practices for Oral History Projects

Sample Service Learning/CBL Courses

Course title: Oral History and Community

Instructor: Rina Benmayor

School: California State University, Monterey Bay

Categories:Communications

Description: This is a project-based learning experience, sponsored by the Oral History and Community Memory Institute and Archive at CSUMB. The theme guiding this work is Land, Memory, and Balance.

Course Title:Sociology of Appalachian Culture

Instructor:Susan H. Ambler

School:Maryville College

Category:Sociology/Anthropology

Description:Students participate in a community based research project working in collaboration with the members of Cades Cove Preservation Association. The purpose of this project is to obtain and preserve the experiences of those remaining individuals who lived in Cades Cove before the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Course title: US History Since 1865

Instructor: Tracy Lai

School: Seattle Central Community College

Category:History

Model Program - The Veterans Oral History Project

Partners:

  • Library of Congress
  • Prince George’s Community College Book Bridge Project
  • Prince George’s Community College Service Learning Office
  • Forestville High School

Outcomes:

  • A better understanding and appreciation of those who served in various wars and connection to U.S. history.
  • This project supported building a lasting legacy of recorded interviews, memoirs, and other documents chronicling the veterans’ wartime experiences, and how those experiences affected their lives.

Best Practices:

  • The interviews and artifacts collected are maintained by the Library of Congress as a permanent part of the nation’s record, capturing the reflections and experiences of veterans.
  • The history project overlapped with a college-wide initiative, the Book Bridge Project, in which a book was selected for reading by the entire campus, “Easier Said: The Autobiography of LeRoy A. Battle”
  • Prince George’s Community College developed a partnership with Forestville High School to encourage both college and high school students to become engaged in the process of oral history, to develop an appreciation of those who served their country, and to breakdown stigmas attached to elderly veterans.
  • All participating students received training in interview techniques.

Suggested Readings/Resources

  • Crothers, A.G. "Bringing History to Life": Oral History, Community Research, and Multiple Levels of Learning
  • The Oral History Review, Vol. 29, No. 2, My First Experience with Oral History (Summer - Autumn, 2002)
  • University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Southern Oral History Program

Linfield College Spring 2008

Community Service Program