Publications

Gathering firsthand accounts from eyewitnesses to history is rewarding work. Interviewers invest hours of research time before and during an interview series and narrators reward them with candid, thoughtful responses. The collaboration shared by both in giving voice to an individual's experience with history is almost always mutually gratifying.

Transcribers and editors contribute additional hours preparing the oral history for public view, with the reward coming at the moment students or seasoned scholars find salient testimony to support their research topics. For those students and scholars, satisfaction arrives with the completion of their thesis or dissertation, the publication of their article, book chapter, or full-length book, or the presentation of a lecture or documentary production.

As the witness of an oral history interview becomes known to wider and wider circles, informing, complicating, and contradicting previous understandings of the past, interviewers and their narrators realize again the reward of oral history done well. We welcome your review of recent publications based upon the Baylor oral history collection through the links in the box above. Authors of these works may be the original interviewers, including Institute faculty, Baylor faculty, and others. They may be students and scholars who found useful materials within oral history memoirs created by others and made available in Baylor's oral history collection. Many are former Faculty Research Fellows or Visiting Research Fellows supported by Institute research grants.

In addition to supporting investigation of our collection, the Institute for Oral History finds both the methodology and theory of oral history -- the doing and the understanding of what we are doing -- exciting. We promote best standards for oral history applications in interdisciplinary research. The list below highlights our publications on doing and understanding oral history.

Publications from the Institute for Oral History

	Thinking about Oral History: Theories and Applications edited by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E. Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless AltaMira Press, 2007 Prominent oral historians present theories on memory, communication, narrative, life course, and gender that contribute to the analysis and understanding of oral history and raise issues to consider when preparing to share oral history outcomes through print publications, biography, performance, and audio or film/video documentaries. Available in paperback for course adoption. Learn more.
	History of Oral History: Foundations and Methods edited by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E. Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless AltaMira Press, 2007 Designed for the advanced student and experienced oral historian, these essays present the essentials of oral history, conceptualized with theory, informed by historiography, and stimulated by new field methods. Available in paperback for course adoption. Learn more.
	Handbook of Oral History edited by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E. Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless AltaMira Press, 2006 Essays on the theoretical foundations and practical applications of our craft from eighteen prominent oral historians. Learn more.
	The Past Meets the Present: Essays on Oral History edited by David Stricklin and Rebecca Sharpless University Press of America, 1987 Essays by noted oral historians on the craft and art of interviewing in interdisciplinary settings. Now online.
	Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience edited by Jaclyn Jeffrey and Glenace Edwall University Press of America, 1994 Essays on the psychology of memory and its impact on oral history.