UCLA library officials named veteran employee Teresa Barnett as
the director of a long-established program that documents numerous
interviews to record a local history.
UCLA’s Oral History Program preserves records of the
recent past by audio recording people who experienced events
first-hand. These recordings are then transcribed and released as
books.
Many program employees believe oral history offers many perks
that regular pamphlets or official documents cannot express or
encompass, allowing for the people involved in an event or topic to
tell their own side of the story and thus give an account that
might not be found in formal documents.
Barnett, who emphasized this aspect of oral history, said,
“There are kinds of information that you can only get through
oral history. It is not just the official side of
things.”
There are more than 1,000 oral history programs today that are
associated with government agencies, libraries, universities,
private institutions and other organizations ““ and all have
the common goal of preserving the past.
The UCLA Oral History Program was established in 1959 and
resulted from historians, librarians and members of the community
urging to keep an oral history of UCLA.
The program focuses primarily on local and regional topics and
events, especially in relation to the Los Angeles area.
The UCLA Oral History Program has a trained staff of
interviewers, editors, and transcribers, who work to interview and
record people of key interest in major topics that affect the local
community.
Topics covered by the program range from visual arts to
politics, from African American history to biomedical science.
Other subject areas include Chicana/o studies, civil liberties,
jazz and books.
Barnett began her career with the program in 1987, as an editor
and interviewer. Some of the topics that she has covered
include social activism, UCLA history, and visual arts.
Alva Stevenson, an administrative specialist with the UCLA Oral
History Program, believes that some of Barnett’s assets that
will help the program include her longevity with the program and
various networks with other oral history programs.
“She has a real ability to look at the big picture in
documenting communities and social movements as it regards to oral
history documentation in the Los Angeles and Southern
California,” Stevenson said.
Barnett not only offers a lot of experience with the program,
but her background also may lead to launching the UCLA Oral History
Program into new frontiers in conjunction with the UCLA
library.
University Librarian Gary Strong believes that Barnett’s
qualities will bring a lot to the program.
“Teresa brings considerable strengths to this position,
including extensive knowledge and experience in oral history
theory, methodology, practice and teaching,” Strong said in a
press release. “Her background is ideally suited to launching
the program in new directions, including utilizing digital
technologies that will further enhance access to our oral histories
for research and instruction.”
Currently, people are limited in their access to the transcribed
recordings. Copies can be either purchased or heard at the
Charles E. Young Research Library.
But, the copies often can prove to be inconvenient because it is
hard to find a specific area within the text.
Another significant problem that Barnett sees with the
transcribed versions is that viewers cannot hear the emotion of the
interviewees, thus losing much of the valuable information that
could be heard by listening to the tone of someone’s voice in
describing a topic or event.