Listening to Oral History

Oral records are crucial to our understanding of the 20th century. They give a voice to ordinary people, and describe events and everyday life in way that isn’t documented in any other format. They allow us to preserve dialects, accents and usage of old words. They allow us to hear emotion and emphasis.

We think it’s vital that the public gets a chance to hear these recordings in their original form. Transcripts may give you the facts, but not necessarily the meaning. This is why we are making a commitment to increase and improve access to Worcestershire’s Oral History collection. We are hoping to do this in a number of ways:

a) Working with the local radio station, BBC Hereford and Worcester, to promote, publicize and broadcast Oral History
b) The Juke Box in the History Centre, Trinity Street.
c) Sound Bites on the Website
d) Compilations of Oral History on CD or cassette (eg The BBC Century Speaks Project)

The Juke Box

One novel way of bringing Oral History to the public is our Juke Box, installed in the Education area of the History Centre in Trinity Street. Instead of holding music tracks, the Juke Box is filled with Oral History CDs from our World War Two Collection. Members of the public can listen at any time, with headphones provided. This year we plan to digitise many more of our recordings for the Juke Box.