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Reviewed by:
  • New Roots, Nuevas Raices: Voices from Carolina del Norte
  • Mario Carrillo
New Roots, Nuevas Raices: Voices from Carolina del Norte. Website, Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://newroots.lib.unc.edu/

[Corrigendum]

New Roots is the title of an ambitious project from the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) at the University of North Carolina (UNC). A new generation of migrant workers in North Carolina has rapidly transformed the culture, economy, and social lifestyles of the state, and SOHP launched this effort in 2006 to record their experiences. New Roots won the Oral History Association's 2016 Elizabeth B. Mason Award, and it is well deserved; the project reflects the tangible impact of immigration in an unlikely place. The website not only records primary data but also preserves qualitative and quantitative data on a large scale for the future.

New Roots hosts an online collection of oral history interviews, and its structure resembles that of an archive. The home page acts as a central hub for browsing the site; by selecting links, visitors can view 130 individual oral histories by categories, authors, themes, or even key terms. This is extremely useful for navigating and finding specific information within lengthy audio files—one can best use this site for data gathering rather than leisurely browsing. Additional maps and biographies are provided as supplementary information, but the pages of oral interviews comprise the majority of the content.

SOHP, in conjunction with the Latino Migration Project, stands as a principle force in the field of migration studies and has developed New Roots as a glimpse into what the field values. The creators did not want to track just the physical path that Latino immigrants take on the way to North Carolina. Instead, they wanted to use the academic departments of "journalism, communications, geography, history, cultural and religious studies, as well as the social sciences" to track changing social ideas (New Roots, "About," https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/). [End Page 119] The result of such a broad spectrum of interests is a content-heavy database that one would use ideally for data-mining purposes as needed for a particular field of study. The site's creators are also striving to measure qualitatively the impact of migration on the area by documenting the persistence of native traditions and learned customs.

This UNC/SOHP website relies almost exclusively on primary sources, resulting in a rich variety and quantity of data. The New Roots team of interviewers conduct the interviews, and staff members upload the full oral histories for public access. At the current moment, they have included 130 interviews on the website, covering everything from Mayan Guatemalan life, perils of migrant travel, and the stories of those who call North Carolina home. This reviewer applauds this variety of interviewees and appreciates the desire of the project's leadership to dispel the misconception that immigrants are just a labor force: instead, the diverse pool of interviewees highlight the experiences and contributions that Latinos can make as individuals, not just as a faceless demographic.

Ultimately, the nature of New Roots as an in-depth archive also reveals a weakness. Packed with content and organized into a variety of categories, it provides quick access to quality data when the need arises. The interviews follow a structure but still deviate to focus on crucial, unique themes. Researchers seeking to find a single fact or theme while still retaining the personal touch associated with primary data will get the most out of New Roots. However, people who have no specific theme or story in mind as they browse will find it difficult to navigate due to the specific nature of the search structure. Ironically, there is too much data in each page to manually search each interview for specific criteria. Although this is by no means a deal-breaker, it does seem as if the content is geared toward those with considerable prior knowledge; several interviews, for example, do not clarify locations or customs within North Carolina, which can confuse those, such as this reviewer, who are unfamiliar with them.

New Roots is a legitimate source of oral history. Unlike modern news stories, these...

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