User:Lc.umd/sandbox

Proposed Restructure of Oral History page (Week 7)
[This is also posted on the Oral History Talk page to allow time to get feedback before instituting.]

This week a read through a few of my sources to gain a better grasp and oral history, and think about how I might reshape the nation-state aspect of the current format. I took the current tree structure and grouped together like-content, that renamed as needed. So far, I have the proposed restructure. A condensed version of the proposed restructure:

Contents

1] Growth and Development

2] Academia and Institutions

3] Legal interpretation

4] Methods

5] Organizations

6] Oral History in Popular Culture

7] Resources

8] Controversies

9] Notable Oral Historians

10] Notable Oral History Projects

11] References

12] Further reading

13] External links

From here, further rearranging can be done such as moving the Italy entry under Notable Oral Historians since the content is essentially about Alessandro Portelli. And will look to do other similar work.

Wiki Article, Editing (Week 5)
''This article needs an overhaul, but the one chunk of text I wanted to focus on was the Czech passage. Suggested edits below. Although citations are needed in a few places, I decided the first step was to make this English version readable. My sense is that someone from the Oral History Center published content from their website or a report.''

Czech oral history
Czech oral history began to develop beginning in the 1980s with a focus on social movements and political activism. [citation needed] The practice of oral history and any attempts to document stories prior to this is fairly unknown. [citation needed] The practice of oral history began to take shape in the 1990s. [need references.] In 2000, The Oral History Center (COH) at the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic (AV ČR) was established with the aim of "systematically support the development of oral history methodology and its application in historical research."

In 2001, Post Bellum, a nonprofit organization, was established to "documents the memories of witnesses of the important historical phenomenons of the 20th century" within the Czech Republic and surrounding European countries. Post Bellum works in partnership with Czech Radio and Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. Their oral history project Memory of Nation was created in 2008 and interviews are archived online for user access. As of January 2015, the project has more than 2100 published witness accounts in several languages, with more than 24,000 pictures.

Other projects, including articles and books have been funded by the Czech Science Foundation (AV ČR) including: These publications aim to demonstrate that oral history contributes to the understanding of human lives and history itself, such as the motives behind the dissidents' activities, the formation of opposition groups, communication between dissidents and state representatives and the emergence of ex-communist elites and their decision-making processes.
 * "Students in the Period of the Fall of Communism — Life Stories" published as the book One Hundred Student Revolutions (1999) by M. Vaněk and M. Otáhal;
 * "Political Elites and Dissidents during the Period of So-called Normalization — Historical Interviews" which resulted in Victors? Vanquished (2005), a two-volume collection of 50 interviews;
 * a compilation of original interpretive essays entitled The Powerful?! or Helpless?!
 * "An Investigation into Czech Society during the 'Normalization' Era: Biographic Narratives of Workers and the Intelligentsia" and
 * A book of interpretations called Ordinary People...?! (2009).

Oral history centers in the Czech Republic emphasize educational activities (seminars, lectures, conferences), archiving and maintaining interview collections, and providing consultations to those interested in the method. [citation needed.]

Wiki Topic, Sources (Week 4)
I have assigned myself Oral History and will begin with basic copy editing and proofing. I will touch base with Maya Reid to coordinate the first steps and identify portions we want to undertake. The Czech translation portion I is high on my list, as well as the editing/cutting promotional language. Another key piece is to shape this in the structure of well-written Wiki entries so future editors have a common/familiar baseline to work from.

References for providing me with a sound understanding to help shape this article include: I'll read/review intros from the following sources:
 * The Oral History Association and its journal, The Oral History Review: http://www.oralhistory.org/about/do-oral-history/
 * History Matters at George Mason University: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/what.html
 * Geology.com: http://www.genealogy.com/articles/research/2_oralhs.html
 * Doing oral history : a practical guide
 * The oral history manual
 * Oral history : an interdisciplinary anthology
 * Handbook of oral history
 * So They Understand: Cultural issues in Oral History (plus Sorting out oral tradition and oral history, Gathering to tell stories: the neglected genre in oral history)
 * Women's Words : The Feminist Practice of Oral History (plus A feminist frame for the oral history interview)

In look for resources, there are many interesting oral history books. Perhaps I can create a reading list for further reading and/or examples. I would definitely like to try to add an audio clip, as well.

Article evaluation (Week 3)
I chose "Oral history" and immediately found the language of the opening paragraph distracting. The reference to "audiotapes" and "videotapes" sounds dated, and perhaps could infer oral history is a dated means of information gathering. These terms need to be updated to reflected to include modern, digital recording devices.

In modern times
This section draws soley on U.S./American examples. The excerpted text is rather long, and here too, are primarily U.S./America cited examples. This comes across rather narrow and unbalanced.

One paragraph, about oral histories of Holocaust survivors, has jarring sentence structure and would be a good candidate for some copyediting.

In Europe: Great Britain and Ireland
Pieces of this section have self-promotional content and likewise, would benefit from copyediting. The opening has rather general information about the benefits of oral history, already covered in the introduction. Additionally, some of the description could be fleshed out to provide a better overview of the oral documentation being described.

In Italy
The brief text is biographical information about an oral historian; it does not add to the traditions and methodology of the overall article. This section needs further expansion. In the meantime, this entry could be moved to the latter section Prominent Oral Historians.

In Soviet/Eastern Bloc States
The Belarus section is in need of editing and clarification. The first sentence dives into some political references without a lot of context. The Czech section is almost illegible and has first-person narrative ("we," "I"). Here, and in the Projects section, suffer from translation issues. Additionally, the Projects is a second section of the Czech portion, so some indication that this text is specific to the Czech Republic should be done.

In Spain
This section, too, is brief and rather promotional, using judgemental language ("losers," "a leading exponent"). From these entries, a theme is emerging of suppressed histories and storytelling that surfaced after a political era of repression. This could be an theme/topic entry.

In the United States
The Elite Studies section is a bit jarring as an introduction to Oral History in the United States. The second paragraph is more useful as the introduction as it gives an overview, and then move into the Elite Studies and Folklore sections. Overall, this section is written a bit more clearly, but still has elements of promotional language that should be modified to read more objectively.

In the Middle East
This minimal text reads as a lost piece of text from a fuller description. While the paragraph reads as direct information, both sentences call for further exposition to offer the reader a framework for how this fits into research.

In Asia
This section, and it's subsection and structure, is better written and easier to follow with the use of different headings for different sections and a bullet lists. At this point, it has become apparent there is no consistent structure of naming subsections. An evaluation to find patterns would be useful to design a consistent format structure so the reader knows what to expect from each section.

Methods
This section is in need of copyediting, and an explanation of who "Feldstein" is (this paragraph reads like a refugee text from a longer piece). Again, the language here seems fair U.S. focused, given the preceding sections' mention that oral histories didn't emerge until the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Legal interpretation and relationship to historical truth
Again, this section is in need of copyediting. Some examples given need to give the country/state where the situation took place. Paragraphs 1 and 4 do this, but 2 and 3 are untethered, making it difficult to situate the example.

Other controversies in oral history
No real critiques here (other than needs copyediting). I know the book, I, Rigoberta Menchú, and found this section interesting.

Organizations
With three entries across two categories (two journals and 1 list-serve), this section needs some re-tooling (journals and list-serves aren't themselves organizations, but outcomes of organization work). The H-ORALHIST entry is very promotional, and includes descriptive information of what a list-serve does that is non-essential.

Summary
I was surprised that a seemingly well-used method of information and story gathering was have a Wikipedia entry that was thin and unbalanced. It is need of some housekeeping, the least of which is copyediting, to become a sturdier overview of oral history around the world.