Oral History Research Office microfiche, circa 1945-1989

Biographical Note

In 1970, Columbia University's Oral History Research Office (OHRO) entered into an agreement to microfiche select interviews through the Microfilming Corporation of America (MCA), a New York Times company. A primary goal of this project for the OHRO was to increase access to interviews through sale of microfiche to other archives and libraries. Additionally, the OHRO intended that the modest royalties that would accrue would help fund the ongoing activities of the office. By 1973, Part I was published on microfiche, containing over 200 interviews. In the next few years, MCA published three more batches of approximately 200 interviews. Part II followed in 1975, Part III in 1976, and Part IV in 1979. The East Asian Institute's Chinese oral history project, while not under the auspices of the OHRO at the time, also had microfiching done by MCA starting in 1975. In 1984, the OHRO contracted with Meckler Publishing to micropublish Part V, resulting in over 200 more interviews being fiched. Meckler also assumed publication of the back-catalog. In 1988, Meckler published Part VI, amounting to over 100 more interviews. The process of obtaining permissions to micropublish was a major activity of the OHRO from the 1970s through the early 1980s. Original agreements between the OHRO and oral history interviewees had vested rights with the interviewees, and a precursor to publication was obtaining the copyright from the interviewees. Considerable effort was put into this correspondence, though many interviewees declined the invitation to have their interviews microfiched. Libraries and archives around the world purchased the microfiche, and it is still widely available at these repositories. Beginning in 2015, Columbia University Libraries began digitizing the microfiche, and by 2023 all digitized microfiche transcripts were available via Columbia University Libraries' Digital Library Collections portal.

Scope and Contents

The Oral History Research Office microfiche contains 1165 interviews and the Annual Reports of the OHRO from 1948-1975. The microfiche was published in six segments, the first being published in 1973 and the last in 1988. Microfiche was initially manufactured and sold by the Microfilming Corporation of America (MCA) and then by Meckler Publishing. The microfiche contains interviews from across the collections of the Oral History Archives at Columbia. At 473 interviews, Individual Interviews are the largest proportion. These are interviews taken independently of a larger project. Some of the other most represented collections are Eisenhower administration project (182), Social security project (83), Aviation project (76), Adlai E Stevenson project (43), Bennington Summer School of the Dance project (43), Radio pioneers project (43), Carnegie Corporation project (33), Columbia Crisis of 1968 project (25), Hollywood film industry project (25), Naval history project (22), Book-of-the-Month Club project (16), Popular arts project (16), Occupation of Japan project (15), Chinese oral history project (10), Mount Sinai Hospital project (9), Children's Television Workshop project (8), and Theodore Roosevelt Association project (8). There is also microfiche for a large interview with Moe Foner that was not part of the MCA/Meckler catalog. Paper-based transcripts, tapes, and digital materials associated with the microfiche are managed with their proper provenance-based collections. All microfiche in this collection has been digitized and the finding aid contains links to the digitized interviews.

Subjects

• History, Modern--20th century
• Interviews
• Microforms
• Oral histories (literary works)
• United States--History--20th century