Over the course of its seventy-year history, oral history has gone through a few iterations — the Oral History Research Office, the Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia Center for Oral History Research, and, today, the Oral History Archives at Columbia.

In each of its incarnations, in addition to conducting interviews for collections, oral historians have conducted interviews with compelling individuals in the arts, the sciences, activism, government, business, and countless other areas.

As we move toward greater availability of content reformatted from analog materials, biographical (i.e. interviews) interviews are beginning to appear online for use!

Check out the catalog record for more historical details and dive into the Digital Library Collection using the search term “individual interviews oral history collection” to see what’s available. You can also search using keyword + oral history to find particular interviews of interest.