BPS Archives Oral Histories consist of interviews by BPS Archives volunteers, or other interviewers to whom accreditation is given, with people identified by BPS Archives as the equivalent of living artifacts and whose memories and reportable nuances of life are either products of or deeply influences by BPS.
Oral Histories vary in length, depth and breadth of content. They tend to impart the interviewee’s personality, character and ability to know, remember and relate stories about events, people, institutions and places experienced by the interviewee or about which the interview is knowledgeable, often from a time earlier in history which may not be commonly known about, all in a more personalized sense that artifacts, only. In this sense, Oral Histories are living histories.
Many oral histories are deserving of preservation and accession into BPS Archives, but they are not recorded and therefore not preserved because of the mental or physical condition of a prospective interviewee, unanticipated and untimely death before an interview can be conducted or because of a lack of a sufficient number of volunteers to “capture” the oral history before it is lost to time.
The Oral Histories Index can be found
here.