Texas Oral History Association Announces Second Phase of Oral History Collection Survey
In 2022, the Texas Oral History Association (TOHA) launched the Texas Oral History Locator Database (TOLD), a project to document Texas’ oral history collections for discovery in a single, publicly accessible website. TOLD is a holistic attempt to locate, document, and create better access to Texas’ oral memoirs. The first phase resulted in 26 institutions’ collections being listed in the database, representing tens of thousands of unique stories that are now discoverable in one simple interface at toha.web.baylor.edu/told.
This summer sees the launch of a “Phase Two” survey targeted at the project level that will allow collection managers to further describe the content of their oral histories. This survey allows collection holders to select which existing collection in the database they are entering data for and is repeatable, allowing each project's data to be entered independently.
Phase Two allows for the addition of more details about the distinct projects in each collection (such as themes, populations, and eras), or even a list of interviewee names. This data will be fully text-searchable and featured in various filters of the database search to provide users additional ways to find Texas oral memoir materials.
Institutions interested in contributing their materials to TOLD can keep up to date on the project at https://toha.web.baylor.edu/told and by following TOHA on social media (@TexasOralHistoryAssociation on Facebook and @TxOralHist on Twitter). In addition, institutions may complete either the Phase 1 or Phase 2 surveys at the links below.