The State Library actively collects and preserves the oral history of Western Australia in its oral history collection.
Interviews may be recorded and transcribed by staff or under contract. Many more interviews are conducted in cooperation with other institutions such as the National Library and the Western Australian Parliament. Projects may be funded by local government, community groups and other institutions. Donations of individual interviews or collections are actively sought from others involved in the field.
The State Library's oral history collection contains over 10,000 hours of tape representing interviews with over 5,000 Western Australians. It is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind in any Australian State Library and the major archival repository for oral histories in Western Australia.
The collection is primarily a collection of audio tape-recorded, structured interviews in which interviewees talk about their lives or particular events and experiences in the past. There are stories of war, migration, personal and family relationships, mining, droving, prevailing social attitudes and farm life. Interviews in the collection span over 130 years of memories and many are with people born in the 19th Century - the earliest born in 1863.
The major strength of the collection is in interviews with Western Australians sharing their everyday lives and representing a wide range of employment groups, social backgrounds, ethnic communities, lifestyles and experiences. Areas of strength in the collection include writers, pastoralists and graziers, Western Australian parliamentarians, nurses, business people and community leaders as well as topics as diverse as fisheries and whaling, land settlement schemes, aviation, music and dance. Regional strengths are mainly in areas where local oral history groups are, or have been, active including Albany, Bunbury, Busselton, Collie, Subiaco, Harvey, Geraldton, City of Swan and Port Hedland.
Highlights of the Oral History Collection
With over 5,000 interviews with Western Australians from varying walks of life and on so many different topics, it is impossible to showcase all of them here. The following highlights illustrate the collections coverage :
Access to the Collection
Many of the interviews have transcripts (some with comprehensive indexes) while most of the rest have a synopsis of content. Users of the collection can listen to the interview on cassette tape while reading the transcript. Access for groups to listen to a tape can also be arranged. Transcripts may be requested through a public library on inter-library loan by country residents. Extracts from transcripts can usually be photocopied under conditions similar to those of published books but the State Library's permission, and often the interviewee's, is required for publication. Some tapes and transcripts are subject to special conditions and may not be available for use without permission from the interviewee.
Access to the oral history collection is to be found by searching the State Library Catalogue. The State Library is grateful to the Oral History Association of Australia (Western Australian Branch) for its assistance in placing the collection on-line. You can also access materials using a Subject Oral History Reference Guide available in the Battye Library. The State Library's oral history collections and collections in other states of Australia may be accessed from the National Library of Australia's oral history collections web site.
Do it Yourself Oral History
The Battye Library has produced a tape entitled How to Interview by Ronda Jamieson, which is available for use in the Battye Library or for purchase. A kit on interviewing for family history purposes (Young, Old and In Between), is available for purchase only. Books on producing and using oral history are also available and can be found in the State Library Catalogue.
Oral History Association
The Oral History Association of Australia was formed in 1978 and there are branches in every state. The objectives of the Oral History Association are:
State and national conferences include discussions about oral history projects and issues such as ethics, recording technology and copyright. For more information on the Oral History Association of Australia (Western Australia Branch) visit: http://www.ohaa-wa.com.au/