Monday, June 3, 2013

Tracking Down Oral Histories on Regulation

[We have the following query about what looks to be a very useful project. My suggestion is the Oral History Program of the Historical Society of the D.C. Circuit.]

At Duke University, history professor Ed Balleisen is leading a project to create an online gateway to regulatory oral histories—oral histories with regulators, the regulated, or political actors who were instrumental in creating or changing regulatory agencies or frameworks. As part of the project, we are working to catalog and tag the most relevant oral histories to make them more accessible as well as to help sort through what interviews have been conducted and the work that remains to be done. We have identified several caches, such as those at the SEC Historical Society and the Columbia Center for Oral History (e.g. its FCC project), but we hope to draw on the knowledge of the blog's readers to target individual interviews or other rich collections of oral histories regarding regulatory agencies, whether in the U.S. or elsewhere, at any level of government. While we're especially interested in creating an extant database of digitally accessible oral histories, do also let us know if you're aware of relevant oral histories that remain in analog without a digital transcript. Please e-mail any tips, leads, or general thoughts on the project to william.goldsmith@duke.edu, and much obliged.