Potential, Potential, Potential:
The Marriage of Oral History
and the World Wide Web

Mary A. Larson

In just over a decade, the World Wide Web has gone from appearing as just a blip on the radar of the general public to looming into view as a major cultural entity. In academic circles, discussions concerning the Web and its potential have become commonplace. Should material published online count toward tenure? Is plagiarism more rampant now that students have access to so many Internet resources? Does editing discipline-based listservs constitute professional service?	1
Scanning the session titles from the annual meetings of the Oral History Association (OHA) for the last three years makes it apparent that the Web is the source of serious discussions within the oral history community as well. Since 1998, no fewer than two workshops, eleven sessions, six meetings, and nine additional papers (not included in the counted sessions) have touched on the interplay of oral history and the Web.1	2
This interest sparks some questions about the uses of oral history on the Internet that provide the focus of this essay. How are people tying the methodology to the technology? Who is using the Web and how? The answers to these questions revolve around one key word—potential. The Web's utility in oral history is related to how people generally envision using this new technology. That is evident in the four main kinds of sites on today's Web. Some utilize the technological infrastructure for e-commerce. Others make information available to a wider public. A third type uses sites as teaching tools or resources, while a fourth constructs sites that express creativity. With the possible exception of blatant commercialism, the larger state of the Web closely reflects that of the oral history community.2	3
The four kinds of oral history sites vary considerably. The first two oral history Web site types are really subsets of the second kind of site listed above (stressing information availability), while the third and fourth parallel their counterparts in the larger Web universe. Many oral history programs and archives at colleges, universities, and other major institutions use Web technology to make the general public more aware of the material housed in their collections. These sites commonly contain finding aids of some description, such as catalogs, indices, and searchable databases that present information about their oral history holdings. A good example is the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University. (Addresses of Web sites discussed herein are listed at the end of this essay.) The site provides a well-delineated, alphabetical index of interviewees, with a note indicating that a cross-referenced subject index will be added in the future (currently it is available only in hard copy). The Oral History Research Office at Columbia University has a similar list of interviewees as well as a list of projects, while the University of Nevada Oral History Program has a word-searchable catalog containing abstracts of its interviews.	4
A related type of site publishes online transcripts and/or audio samples, while another presents information about oral history methodology. These are usually not full multimedia productions, but some will add short, excerpted audio clips or photographs. Such sites seek to help researchers learn what materials are available. By placing transcripts on the Web, the sponsors of the sites make it much easier for many scholars and others to consult oral history resources without having to travel to a repository.	. . .