Copyright
Unless otherwise noted, copyright for an interview is held by the program or project contributing the interview. If you are interested in using an interview in any way, please refer to the contributing program’s guidelines for citing and using their oral history materials. If you are unsure about whether or how you can use a particular interview, please contact the contributing program directly with questions.
This page can provide more information on Copyright. This page can provide more information on Fair Use. Thank you to our partner, California Revealed, for developing this information.
Content Submitted
The State of California and California State Library (State Library) are not responsible for the content, completeness or accuracy of any video and/or document uploaded, posted, or transmitted onto the State Library’s website or online filing system that was prepared and submitted by another person or organization. Additionally, the views of the information submitted are those of the author and do not represent the views of the State Library. The State Library may review or monitor any and all filed videos and/or documents submitted, but is under no obligation to do so and assumes no responsibility or liability arising from the content of any such items nor for any error, defamation, libel, slander, omission, falsehood, obscenity, pornography, profanity, danger, or inaccuracy contained in any submitted material, file or information within such locations on the State Library’s website or online filing system.
Using Oral Histories
The Oral History Association, in its Principles and Best Practices, provides this definition of oral history:
Oral history refers to both the interview process and the products that result from a recorded spoken interview (whether audio, video, or other formats). In order to gather and preserve meaningful information about the past, oral historians might record interviews focused on narrators’ life histories or topical interviews in which narrators are selected for their knowledge of a particular historical subject or event. Once completed, an interview, if it is placed in an archive, can be used beyond its initial purpose with the permission of both the interviewer and narrator.
During the course of an oral history interview, the interviewer and narrator (also known as the interviewee) create a partnership of sorts. Through this partnership, they work together to document the narrator’s life and memory. It is the narrator’s lived experiences that illuminate aspects of the past, which are recorded and preserved for future users. Oral histories are primary sources and can be used as such in historical research, but they are also often deeply personal and imbued with the emotional truth and worldview of the narrator. Truth and facts in oral histories represent what is true and factual to the narrator. Oral histories do not represent the single, verified account of any particular historical event, and should be used with and compared to other primary and secondary sources that exist.