Primary Source Learning: Oral Histories & Personal Narratives
LOC.gov contains numerous oral history and personal narrative resources. Check out the lists below!
Teaching resources
- Analyzing Primary Sources: Learning from Oral Histories
- Learning from the Source: Chicago Meatpackers & the Unions
- Learning from the Source: Digital Stories of Our Heroes
- Learning from the Source: Media & Migrant Laborer Perspectives
- Primary Source Learning: September 11, 2001
- Capturing an Oral History: Tips for Students
- Billy the Kid: Perspectives on an Outlaw
- Exploring Community Through Local History: Oral Stories, Landmarks and Traditions
- Family Customs Past and Present: Exploring Cultural Rituals
- The Great Depression in North Carolina: Experiences of the People
- Immigration and Oral History
- Immigration: Our Changing Voices
- Looking Into Holidays Past Through Primary Resources
- Oral History and Social History
- Migration during the Great Depression: Living History
- Personal Stories and Primary Sources: Conversations with Elders
PSN curated oral history collections
- Today in History: September 11, 2001
- Primary Source Spotlight: Life on the Farm
- Today in History: Ellis Island
- Today in History: Slave Auction
Veterans History Project
- Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans History Project, World War I to present
- Veterans’ Stories: The Veterans History Project primary source set and teachers guide
- Veterans’ Stories: Struggles for Participation primary source set and teachers guide
Oral history collections
- After the Day of Infamy: “Man-on-the-Street” Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor (teaching resources: collection connections)
- American English Dialect Recordings interviews, 1941-1984
- American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940 (teaching resources: collection connections)
- Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada interviews, 1945-1982 (teaching resources: collection connections)
- California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849-1900 (teaching resources: collection connections)
- The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, 1600-1925 (teaching resources: collection connections)
- First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 (teaching resources: collection connections)
- Florida Folklife Interviews from the WPA Collections, 1937-1942
- Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1940-1990
- Pioneering the Upper Midwest autobiographies, 1820-1910 (teaching resources: collection connections)
- Quilts and Quiltmaking in America interviews, 1978 (teaching resources: collection connections)
- September 11, 2001, Documentary Project: audio interviews, video interviews and written narratives (teaching resources: collection connections)
- Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938 (teaching resources: collection connections)
- Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia interviews, 1992-1999
- Voices from the Days of Slavery interviews, captured 1932-1975
- Voices from the Dust Bowl interviews, captured 1940-1941 (teaching resources: collection connections)
- Working in Paterson [New Jersey]: Occupational Heritage in an Urban Setting, 1994