This summer the OMA and OSQA presented at the annual conference of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) held in Washington DC!
Panel: From Best Practices to “Next Practices”: Documenting Underrepresented Communities through Oral Histories
Panel Description: Panelists present information on a wide range of projects, from the Densho Project, a large community-based oral history project about Japanese American experience, to Oregon State University’s collaborative efforts to document Latinx and LGBTQ+ communities, to the Inland Northwest Black History Collection. The discussion that follows covers methods used for collection development and access, factors promoting collaboration, and ethical challenges involved in approaching and curating projects documenting underrepresented communities.
Presenters
- Steven Bingo and Qing Meade: That’s So 20th Century: Introducing the Challenges of Legacy Oral History Projects through the Inland Northwest Black History Collection
- Natalia Fernández: Community-Based Oral History Projects: Stories of Oregon’s LGBTQ+ and Latinx Communities
- Geoff Froh and Caitlin Oiye Coon: Densho Oral History Collections: A Community-based Collection for the Japanese American Community
OMA and OSQA Presentation
Community-Based Oral History Projects: Stories of Oregon’s LGBTQ+ and Latinx Communities
The Oregon State University Oregon Multicultural Archives and OSU Queer Archives is currently engaged in two oral history projects that enable – in one case, university students and in another, community members – the opportunity to engage with their local communities through oral history projects with groups that are traditionally underrepresented within the archival record, specifically, members of the LGBTQ+ community as well as members within Oregon’s Latinx communities. The presentation describes the two projects – OSQA’s local LGBTQ+ community oral histories and the OMA’s Latinos en Oregón oral history project – and addresses the methods for collection development and promoting collaboration (including collaborating with community liaison(s), training interviewers to conduct oral history interviews, as well as celebrating the interviewees and the stories shared), providing access to the stories gathered, and the ethical challenges involved in approaching and curating projects documenting underrepresented communities.
