Creating Oral History : A Study of Documentation Strategys in Three Public Authority Archives

This study aims to examine how heritage archives in Sweden create oral history by the conduction of interviews. Though previous research have shown that this is a task suitable for archives, there have been a lack of knowledge of how this is actually beeing done. Also, oral history have not earlier been studied in relation to the archives larger objectives. The heritage institutions that have been examined are Sjöhistoriska museet, Visarkivet and Dialekt- och folkminnesarkivet I Uppsala. They are all part of public authoritys and use oral history to create more pluralistic and diverse archive collections. The theory being used to analyze these heritage institution is derived from Terry Cooks article “ Evidence, memory, identity, and community: four shifting archival paradigms”. The main method used to understand the creation of oral history in swedish archives have been to interview chiefs and personnel working whith the collections. Important documents, web pages and laws that govern the work have also been analyzed. A result of this study is that the heritage institutions, dispite that they are governed by public authoritys, are relatively free to decide what to collect and how. Two main perspectives guide the archives. The first is the notion that something is in need of beeing documented before it´s to late. The second can be described as a strategy to fill in collection gaps. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies