Preserving Voices and Memories through Oral History

Have you thought about using the oral history method for family history research? Can you identify family oral traditions that have been passed down through generations? Do you have old tape recordings or more recent digital files of family members talking about their lives?

This month for Twilight Talks, our speaker will be Beth M Robertson. Beth has 45 years’ experience in the fields of oral history and audiovisual preservation, and has just published the Sixth Edition of her acclaimed Oral History Handbook. She will introduce the methodology and ethics of oral history, and discuss memory and remembering and the importance of evaluating oral histories like any other historical source.

Oral history is all about questions, so Beth will leave plenty of time for Q&A.

Beth M Robertson retired from the State Library of South Australia (SLSA) in 2023. From 1987 to 1999 she was the foundation Oral History Officer, and then became responsible for managing all SLSA’s audiovisual formats. For the last 20 years of her career she was Manager, Preservation of all the library’s collections. She was presented with the inaugural national Hazel de Berg Award for Excellence in Oral History in 2006. Beth has also been a member of the Professional Historians Association (SA) for over 35 years. Since 2014 her research interests have included the identification and biographical outlines of 1,728 men and women whose images feature in The Old Colonists Photographic Mosaics Collection held by SLSA.