ABSTRACT
Oral history is the historical source most greatly influenced by the passage of time. It rests on accounts of past experiences and events from the perspective of contemporaries, related after a time delay. Time not only permeates every word spoken, it also robs the historian of sources with every passing day. Amplereason, then, to encourage more historians to engage with this rich and challenging primary source, and to counter its detractors. The complexities of oral history begin with its definition. It is a multi-faceted term: in the singular with the indefinite article, an oral history refers to a spoken memoir, while‘oral history’describes a historical process and methodology; or, as Alessandro Portelli puts it, the term thus refers both to what oral historians hear and to what they subsequently write. 1 In the context of branches of history, the term can be misleading: rather than constituting a distinct type of historical investigation, oral history constitutes a methodology and source base which can be integrated into approaches to history such as social, political, cultural, economic, medical, legal or military history. One of the oldest sources, it predates the written word but gained momentum with the invention of portable recording devices in the 1940s, a momentum which has continued into the twenty-first century and the versatility of digital technologies. Further impetus has stemmed from shifts in historical focus: from the desire to capture the experiences not only of the ‘Great Men of History’, but of everyday life and experiences, for example the shift from consulting documentary sources to examining all records left by human life, and, more recently, a growing interest in memory, both collective and individual. 2
