Book part:

Oral History in den Geschichtswissenschaften: Zwischen Folklore, Elitenforschung und Archivierungsbedürfnis

Life histories and narratives of witnesses of a time period are an important source of information especially for contemporary historians. Since the 1960s the number of Oral History projects in North America and Central Europe has constantly gone up – despite continuing critical assessment of the scientific usage of subjective memory or their relevance in the reconstruction of historical events and despite continually changing necessities and possibilities of analyses. The reasons for this success story are manifold but some of them can be found in the growing technological possibilities. In Oral History this meant a shift from audio recordings in the 1960s to first professional then lay video recordings in the 1980s and 1990s to the usage of social software such as podcasts and blogs in the last couple of years. In addition, due to the internet on the one hand and the changing political constellations on the other, there are various new possibilities to publish Oral Histories and distribute them around the world. Previously unknown technological, regional, legal and ethical questions threaten and push the established Oral History. At this moment there are more questions than answers to these existing challenges.