The Oral History Center (ROHO) is part of The

Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. The office was founded in 1954. ROHO conducts, analyzes, teaches about, and preserves

oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...

interviews on a wide range of topics related to the history of California and the United States. ROHO staff also conduct research on a wide range of historical topics, utilizing oral history as a central primary source to their scholarship.

History

ROHO's original name was the Regional Cultural History Office. It was the second oral history office founded in the country, following only

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. The first interview conducted at the office, before it was officially recognized as a unit on campus, was with

Alice B. Toklas Alice Babette Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein. Early life Alice B. Toklas was born in San F ...

, the long-time partner of

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

. Since its founding in 1954, ROHO has conducted thousands of interviews in a wide variety of subject areas ranging from law and jurisprudence to food and wine. ROHO features especially strong collections on the development of the arts and letters, science and technology, and labor, social, political, and community history in California. ROHO has also conducted numerous interviews on the history of the University of California. ROHO's interviews with scientists include

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

winners such as

Arthur Kornberg Arthur Kornberg (March 3, 1918 – October 26, 2007) was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for the discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic aci ...

Paul Berg Paul Berg (born June 30, 1926) is an American biochemist and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980, along with Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger. The award recognized their con ...

Donald A. Glaser Donald Arthur Glaser (September 21, 1926 – February 28, 2013) was an American physicist, neurobiologist, and the winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber used in subatomic particle physics. Educ ...

, and

Charles Townes Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated wi ...

. Other notable interviews with scientists include

Herbert Boyer Herbert Wayne "Herb" Boyer (born July 10, 1936) is an American biotechnologist, researcher and entrepreneur in biotechnology. Along with Stanley N. Cohen and Paul Berg he discovered a method to coax bacteria into producing foreign proteins, ther ...

and

Stanley N. Cohen Stanley Norman Cohen (born February 17, 1935) is an American geneticist and the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine. Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to transplant genes from one livin ...

. ROHO has also conducted significant oral histories with well-known artists and authors, such as

Dorothea Lange Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange' ...

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...

, and

Carl Rakosi Carl Rakosi (November 6, 1903 – June 25, 2004) was the last surviving member of the original group of poets who were given the rubric Objectivist. He was still publishing and performing his poetry well into his 90s. Early life Rakosi was ...

. ROHO houses collections of oral histories related to

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...

and the

home front Home front is an English language term with analogues in other languages. It is commonly used to describe the full participation of the British public in World War I who suffered Zeppelin#During World War I, Zeppelin raids and endured Rationin ...

during World War II. The interviews conducted by ROHO are deposited in over 700 manuscript libraries worldwide. Many of the interviews are accessible online. The

also houses the original tapes for all of the interviews conducted by ROHO. Once completed, the oral histories are referenced by both scholars and students around the world. ROHO's first director was Corinne Gilb, who led the program from 1954 to 1958. Between 1958 and 2000,

Willa Baum Willa Klug Baum (October 4, 1926 – May 18, 2006) was an oral historian whose pioneering work in oral history methodology and interview techniques served as the foundation for the establishment of oral history as a discipline. Born in Chicago, B ...

directed ROHO. Under her tenure, ROHO amassed over 1,600 oral histories on a wide variety of subjects. Richard Cándida Smith, who is also a professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley, directed the office until spring of 2012. During Cándida Smith's tenure, the number of oral history transcripts made available online expanded dramatically. Neil Henry, formerly Dean of the Department of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, is the current director, serving a two-year appointment that commenced in September 2012.

References

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External links

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Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library
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About the Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library
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Program in Bioscience and Biotechnology Studies
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Suffragists Oral History Project
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Rosie the Riveter / WWII American Home Front oral history project
' University of California, Berkeley Oral history Libraries in California 1954 establishments in California