H-Oralhist Welcome

H-ORALHIST

H-Oralhist Discussion Group Welcome Letter

Welcome to H-ORALHIST, a network of people interested in oral history. Oral history is commonly defined as a method of collecting and preserving tape-recorded remembrances of past experiences. Although historians have been interviewing people since the ancient Chinese dynasties, the modern oral history movement is considered to have begun in 1948 when Allan Nevins established the Columbia University Oral History Research Office. The Oral History Association, with 1,200 members, promotes oral history internationally.

H-ORALHIST is built on the work of OHA-L which began in 1993 under Dr. Terry Birdwhistell at the University of Kentucky. It included subscribers from a variety of backgrounds, including public historians, students, local historians, and university faculty members.

Active editing on H-ORALHIST stimulates discussions which reflect the theory as well as the practice of oral history interviewing. The main objective of H-ORALHIST is to provide an interactive forum for individuals interested in using oral history as defined above or for those who wish to contest the above definition.

H-ORALHIST differs from other publications on oral history because of its interactive nature and its immediacy. Subscription is free and subscribers automatically receive messages in their computer mailboxes. Messages can be saved, discarded, copied, printed out, or relayed to someone else. It is like a newsletter that is free and published daily.

The primary purpose of H-ORALHIST is to enable oral historians more easily to discuss research interests, current projects, teaching methods and the state of historiography in the field. H-ORALHIST is especially interested in methods of teaching oral history to graduate and undergraduate students in diverse settings.

H-ORALHIST seeks to feature dialogues in the discipline, publish syllabi, outlines, handouts, bibliographies, tables of contents of journals, guides to term papers, listings of new sources, library catalogs and archives, and reports on new software, datasets and cd-roms. Subscribers write in with questions, comments and reports. H-ORALHIST posts announcements of conferences, fellowships and jobs. It carries information about new books and commissions book reviews. We will not become an electronic journal. Items posted on H-Oralhist are in the public domain, and may be copied, forwarded, re-disseminated, and/or downloaded provided credit is given to the original author.

H-ORALHIST MODERATORS

In order to screen out trivia and flames (personal attacks), and to maintain the focus of the list, all messages to H-ORALHIST are considered by the list editors.

H-ORALHIST EDITORIAL BOARD

The editors are advised by an international editorial board broadly representative of the state of scholarship.

In cases of contentious messages to the list, the editor on duty may consult with the co-editors and the editorial board to reach a decision whether to post, which will be final. H-ORALHIST is non-partisan and will refrain from posting calls for political action. Where listmembers disagree, their messages should focus on the issues and not on persons. In certain cases, the editors may refer a message back to the contributor either to clarify the content or to focus the issue more closely on the perceived interests of the list. The intention of such action is not to censor but to define the professional and scholarly character of H-ORALHIST.

H-ORALHIST SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

There are no dues or fees of any kind. Subscribers only need an address on the Internet, which is provided to faculty and students by campus computer centers. The consultants there, or your departmental guru, can explain how to send an email message via Internet.

To subscribe to H-ORALHIST, send a message to: listserv@h-net.msu.edu with no subject and the following text:

SUBSCRIBE H-ORALHIST firstname lastname affiliation

You will receive a message from the editor asking for some information. After you respond to the editor, s/he will add you to the H-ORALHIST subscription list.

a) To unsubscribe, send this message to listserv@h-net.msu.edu

          UNSUB H-ORALHIST

Be sure to use the same e-mail address you receive the list at. The listserver will not process your command unless it recognizes your address. Also, you may need to delete temporarily your signature file in the message that you send to listserv@h-net.msu.edu. Listserv tries to read the signature file as a command and you will not be able to unsubscribe without first disabling your signature file.

b) If you are away from campus for the summer, put a "hold" on H-ORALHIST email by sending this command to the listserv:

          SET H-ORALHIST NOMAIL

c) After vacation, you can resume by sending to the listserv:

          SET H-ORALHIST MAIL

d) Instead of receiving messages as they are received, you may prefer daily digests of all messages. To take this option, send this command to the listserv:

          SET H-ORALHIST DIGEST

With this option, however, you may complicate printing out, replying to, or forwarding individual messages.

e) Please unsubscribe from H-ORALHIST and all other mailing lists if you are terminating a particular computer account.

f) Note that mail designed for everyone to read is sent to h-oralhist@h-net.msu.edu, while automatic subscription mail is sent to listserv@h-net.msu.edu.

g) Commercial email operations like CompuServe and America On Line all have Internet connections and can be used as your mailbox.

CONTRIBUTING TO H-ORALHIST

Contributions to H-ORALHIST can be short questions or long documents. Please sign your name and email address to each contribution (we will add the name/address otherwise.) To send them, use one of the following:

1. Send a short email note directly to h-oralhist@h-net.msu.edu

2. When you read a message from H-ORALHIST use the reply command (enter REPLY, type a response, and SEND it)

H-ORALHIST is edited to filter out extraneous messages (like requests for subscription) and items that do not belong on H-ORALHIST. They may belong somewhere else, or in the judgment of the editor they do not aid the scholarly dialogue. The editor will not alter the meaning of the message (but will, if necessary, add name and e-address).

The H-ORALHIST Fileserver

The weekly files of messages are made available from the H-ORALHIST fileserver. To obtain a list of available messages, send a note to listserv@h-net.msu.edu:

        INDEX H-ORALHIST

To obtain a specific document, send listserv the command:

        GET listname filename

Thus, to obtain this document (entitled "H-ORALHIST Welcome") from the fileserver, send a note to listserv with the command:

        GET H-ORALHIST WELCOME

H-ORALHIST is sponsored jointly by the H-Net project and the Oral History Association as one of its affiliated discussion lists. H-Net is a broad initiative sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Michigan State University to establish electronic communications among historians and to educate historians in the use of electronic media.