Oral History Archive
Since its founding in 1970, the Baylor University Institute for Oral History (BUIOH) has collected over 7,800 interviews. The Institute has created transcripts of almost all interviews in the collection, and nearly 4,500 of these transcripts are available to researchers and the public in our online collection as fully text-searchable PDFs. New transcripts of in-process projects are added monthly as work progresses.
BUIOH has also uploaded born-digital or digitized audio files to accompany the transcripts in the online collection. Over 85% of transcripts currently have these corresponding audio files available to stream online. Considering that no transcript captures the whole essence of a recorded exchange between interviewer and interviewee, we encourage serious researchers to listen to the audio recordings to experience a closer approximation of what transpired in the interview. In certain cases, recordings may not align with transcribed text due to interviewee edits, and some transcripts may not have associated audio files available due to interviewee redactions. If you have questions or concerns about these materials, please email us at BUIOH@baylor.edu.
Search the Archive
Below you will find an interactive guide to our online archive, which is divided into twelve collections. You can use it to search for names, projects, themes, and more. After the search you will be able to learn more about the project and will be provided direct links to the transcript and/or audio files. If you encounter any issues with this guide, please contact our collection manager at Steven_Sielaff@baylor.edu.
About the Archive
The research emphases of the Institute for Oral History have evolved since its founding in 1970. Over the years, various projects have grown to become collections, while others were absorbed or combined. The twelve collections below represent the broad rubrics under which discrete projects are housed or are currently underway by our faculty, staff, and students, by our Baylor Faculty Research Fellows, and by recipients of our Community and Charlton Oral History Research Grants:
• Arts and Culture: an investigation of the role of cultural expression, particularly music, art, and theater, in American society.
• Baylor University: diverse subjects on the history of the university, with a current emphasis on the past twenty-five years.
• Education: research on trends and developments in education.
• Family Life and Community History: studies in social history, with particular emphasis on immigrant populations and rural life.
• Historic Preservation: research on the programs and people dedicated to the cause of caring for Texas' material culture.
• Religion and Culture: topics relating to the role of religion in the world.
• Special: a catch-all category for projects that do not fit into any of the other ten collections.
• Texas Baptists: investigations into the denominational life of Texas Baptists.
• Texas Economic: interviews on the economic life of the state.
• Texas Judicial: interviews with icons of the judicial history of the state.
• Waco-McLennan County: interviews related to any aspect of local city or county history.
FAQs
Scholars are welcome to use our interviews under the Fair Use doctrine of the US copyright statute. If you have questions about whether your intended use qualifies as “fair use,” please contact us at BUIOH@baylor.edu. Also, please let us know if you are using our interviews in scholarly work, as we like to keep track of this data and promote the use of our collection.
When citing our interviews, we recommend following The Chicago Manual of Style’s guidelines for “unpublished interviews,” such as in this example:
- Noah Jackson Jr., interview by Mark Firmin, May 28, 2009, transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, TX, https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/oral-memoirs-of-noah-jackson-jr.-series-1-transcript/2066141.
- Noah Jackson Jr., interview by Mark Firmin, May 28, 2009, audio, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, TX, https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/documents/detail/2066108.
The Institute for Oral History chooses interviewees whose recollections best fit within one of our collections. If you know of someone whose life experience fits within our projects, you may let us know about that person and why you think their stories would contribute to our oral history archive. To nominate someone for an interview, complete and return our Interviewee Nomination Form. An alternative could be for you to prepare to interview the person yourself. We can provide you guidance and training in oral history techniques so that you can interview people you know whose stories and memories deserve preserving. Begin your training here.
On a limited basis, we accept oral history interviews/projects for accession into our archive if they meet all of the following criteria:
1) recordings are in the style of an oral history interview, preferably between two people
2) interviews are in playable condition and of a recording quality sufficiently clear for transcription
3) media files for the interviews are in an acceptable format for processing
4) the topic of the interviews contributes to an existing collection of the Institute for Oral History
5) interviews are accompanied by a legal release signed by the interviewees as well as the interviewers, signing over copyright of the materials to Baylor University
6) the donor agrees to provide an Interview Data Form for each interview (available from the Institute)
For more information on submitting your project for evaluation, please contact us.