Nancy MacKay

I'm very pleased that my book is offered in the UK, and I hope you enjoy it.

As a librarian and oral historian, I've been straddling the line between oral history and archives for almost 20 years. My oral history work includes writing, consulting, interviewing, teaching, organizing oral history projects, and coordinating the oral history program.

I wrote Curating Oral Histories somewhat out of desperation. As a new director of an oral history program in 2001, I had many questions that I couldn't find answers for -- about space, recording equipment, keeping records, rights management, cataloging, and preservation. Plenty has been written on interviewing and oral history theory, but nothing about how to care for oral histories in the archive. As I write this in 2010, many questions are still unanswered. Though the field of oral history is blossoming, the methodology for preserving and making access to them is far behind.

I hope this book will help you grapple with the curation issues in your own oral history projects and archives, as it helped me answer questions as I was writing it. The content is based on what I, as an oral historian and librarian, consider the most important issues. The solutions I suggest are those that have been time tested by my own work and that of my colleagues. Most important is to bridge the communication gap between oral historians and archivists.

ENJOY THE BOOK! - Nancy