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.
http://www.compact.org/syllabi/syllabus.php?viewsyllabus=392
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.
http://faculty.maryvillecollege.edu/ambler/soc_222.htm#Resources%20on%20Oral%20History
Course title: US History Since 1865
Instructor:
Tracy Lai
School:
Seattle Central Community College
Category:
History
http://www.compact.org/syllabi/syllabus.php?viewsyllabus=630
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 http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/88.4/crothers.html
 The Oral History Review, Vol. 29, No. 2, My First Experience with Oral History (Summer - Autumn, 2002)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/i287275
Linfield College
Community Service Program
Spring 2008

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Southern Oral History Program http://www.sohp.org/
Linfield College
Community Service Program
Spring 2008