Abstract

The shift from analog to digital means more than just defining technical standards and access via the Internet. Putting oral histories online is a gesture—to share histories, cultures, and perspectives with the world of web users. While the Oral History in the Digital Age (OHDA) Project was effective in providing the expertise to create, curate, and disseminate the media, important questions remain about what it means for people around the world to listen and how they might react to the histories they choose to see and hear. Longstanding questions, concerning the difference between listening to oral histories and reading transcripts, the ways oral history collections should be summarized, the creation of metadata, and the influence of presentation, need to be reconsidered in light of the invitation to engage oral histories online.

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