Texas Oral History Locator Database (TOLD)
In 2022, the Texas Oral History Association (TOHA) and Baylor University Institute for Oral History (BUIOH) partnered to create a new online resource for researchers. The Texas Oral History Locator Database, or TOLD, utilizes survey data provided by collection managers across the State of Texas to identify as many oral history collections as possible. In the resulting database found below, users can easily search a compiled list of oral history holdings and be connected with their collection websites/collection managers.
Do you oversee an oral history collection? Click here to take the Phase One Survey!
Launched in May 2022, Phase One of the TOLD survey enables respondents to provide basic archival and collection-based information about the oral histories they manage. One year later in the Summer of 2023 Phase Two will launch, which will be a repeatable survey targeted at the project level that will allow collection managers to further describe the content of their oral histories. This added element will allow for a deeper level of engagement when researchers filter or search for specific terms or categories across all entries. Once participants submit their surveys they should typically expect to see their data represented in the database within a week!
Search the Database
Have a Question or Want to Participate?
If you are a collection manager and want to include information about your oral histories in the database you can access the Phase One survey here. This survey will take approximately 15-30 minutes to complete and will require you to know basic collection-level statistics regarding your oral history holdings such as approximate interview totals, digital preservation progress, and access policies. Summer of 2023 is the target date for Phase Two of TOLD, which will feature a repeatable survey where you will be able to enter more specific data (timeframes, topical descriptors, population foci, interviewee names, etc.) for each distinct project found in your collection. All managers who participated in Phase One will automatically receive an email invitation to the Phase Two survey when it is released.
For the sake of the surveys and the database, Archive means the physical location that houses the oral history materials, Collection means all the oral history materials found at the archive, and Project are distinct groups of interviews found within the greater collection. Therefore, a collection can house multiple projects, or consist of only one, or simply be a grouping of random interviews gathered over the years. Collection managers can broadly describe the array of interviews in their collections in Phase One, then provide more details over time for each project in Phase Two.
If you have any questions about the survey or the database itself, please contact TOLD Project Lead Steven Sielaff (BUIOH Senior Editor & Collection Manager/TOHA Editor-in-Chief, Sound Historian) at Steven_Sielaff@baylor.edu.