ABSTRACT
Besides contributing to knowledge, oral history practitioners expand its building blocks by creating primary sources. When oral history serves community interests, its producers and users frequently share goals. In a manifestation of the field's interdisciplinarity, scholars who practice oral history are increasingly acquiring archivists' skills. In an indication of how oral history remained on the margins of academics, as the field of oral history grew, it seldom enjoyed close relations with higher education, partly because prior to 1980, many scholars in Latin America dismissed the value of oral sources. For academics, such dissemination is often best done through professional organizations and listservs such as the American Historical Association, Oral History Association, Latin American Studies Association, H-net, and H-Oralhist, or more country-specific organizations. Oral History Association guidelines call for open access to materials, but in communities and nations where violence often accompanies dissent, repositories may have good ethical arguments for restricting access.
