Shut Up and Listen: Adventures of an Oral Historian

In late 2013, I conducted my first oral history at Gettysburg College-or anywhere else. Since then, I\u27ve been fortunate to meet and listen to people from all segments of the College community; document the memories of those who had important positions at the College, were here at fraught times in our history, or have had significant experiences elsewhere; and be a conduit through which people tell their stories in their own words, and add them to the documentary mosaic that is the Musselman Library Oral History Collection. This talk will be about what oral history is, how it\u27s done, and the discoveries it can enable. I\u27ll talk about the oral history initiatives I\u27ve pursued with the support, and sometimes at the instigation, of Library Dean Robin Wagner. I\u27ll describe some of what I\u27ve learned about people and about life through this work. And I\u27ll relate some of the funny, surprising, and embarrassing moments I\u27ve experienced in the course of discovering the College\u27s history one person at a time