http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf4s200481 No online items Catalogue I of the Regional Oral History Office, 1954-1979 Processed by The Bancroft Library staff The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California, 94720-6000 Phone: (510) 642-6481 Fax: (510) 642-7589 Email: [email protected] URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu © 1997 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Note History --History, CaliforniaGeographical (By Place) --California Catalogue I of the Regional Oral 1 History Office, 1954-1979 Catalogue I of the Regional Oral History Office, 1954-1979 The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California Contact Information: The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California, 94720-6000 Phone: (510) 642-6481 Fax: (510) 642-7589 Email: [email protected] URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu Edited by: Suzanne B. Riess and Willa Baum Encoded by: Xiuzhi Zhou © 1997 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Collection Summary Collection Title: Catalogue I of the Regional Oral History Office, Date (inclusive): 1954-1979 Creator: Bancroft Library. Regional Oral History Office Repository: The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California 94720-6000 Languages Represented: English Access Collection is open for research. Publication Rights Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader. Funding This catalogue was made possible through the generosity of : Mr. Ben Swig The Setzer Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Wofford B. Camp Prytancan Alumnac, Inc. An Anonymous Donor Catalogue I of the Regional Oral 2 History Office, 1954-1979 Foreword The Bancroft Library is the major repository of rare books and special collections on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. Its greatest collection derives from the nucleus created by the man for whom it is named, Hubert Howe Bancroft, born in Ohio in 1832, and a Californian for more than a half century before he died in San Francisco in 1918. Bancroft was a regional historian who assembled vast holdings of books, journals, maps and manuscripts to document the history of the area he had chosen to study: primarily western North America, from the plains states to the Pacific Coast, with major emphasis placed on California, but extending from Panama to Alaska. Mr. Bancroft's great undertaking began in his San Francisco bookstore during 1859 when he was but twenty-seven years old and, after being used as source materials for his vast histories in thirty-nine volumes, culminated with the sale and gift of his remarkable collection to the University of California in 1905. Started with a few volumes, his collection came to encompass everything recorded on paper that he could acquire in his field. When he had obtained all such available materials, Bancroft sought out essential documents that could not be brought into his library, such as archives that belonged to the missions or to governmental agencies, Spanish, Mexican and American, and he had these transcribed by a corps of copyists. Having gone to such great lengths to possess even those specialized or privileged materials, Bancroft was not yet satisfied. Recognizing that much important knowledge resided in the memories of aging Californians who were not of a disposition to write it down on paper, Bancroft then undertook his boldest collecting stroke by hiring assistants to interview all kinds of westerners so as to create their autobiographies in a series of manuscripts that he called the "Dictations." These transcriptions of oral interviews ran from a few pages on some specialized topic to a full five-volume autobiographical memoir. Users of The Bancroft Library at the University have always recognized these dictations as one of its greatest possessions. So it was that George R. Stewart, himself an historian as well as a novelist of the west and a professor on the Berkeley campus, in the mid-1940s formulated the idea of continuing the project of the interviews begun by the Library's founder. Not long thereafter, quite independently and a continent's length away, Allan Nevins, an historian at Columbia University, in 1974 established a tape-recorded program of local history for his alma mater. Early in 1952 The Bancroft Library actually entered into this area of documentation when I, succeeding Stewart as Chairman of the Academic Senate's Library Committee, picked up his idea and managed to preserve an exotic bit of local history by arranging for a substantial series of interviews in Paris with Alice B. Toklas, a one-time San Franciscan. The purpose was to create what I flippantly called the "Autobiography of Gertrude Stein," but which really was meant to portray the cultural ambience of San Francisco at the end of the nineteenth century and of Oakland during the period of Gertrude Stein's residence there. With that specialized start and an inept attempt I myself made at Carmel to interview James M. Hopper, an author and founder of the town's bohemian colony, The Bancroft Library entered upon its renaissance of Mr. Bancroft's project of oral histories. This small undertaking, formally begun and funded in 1954, grew slowly but steadily for a few years and then took a huge step forward when Willa Baum became its head in 1958. With enormous energy, ability and knowledge, she and the staff she attracted to the newly named Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) undertook an extensive program of interviews and transcriptions on diverse aspects of California, past and present. This basic ongoing activity has more recently been complemented by oral histories created under the auspices of the Library's History of Science and Technology Program and by a Donated Oral Histories Collection (generally not transcribed), the latter made by other agencies or individuals but saved for scholars at Bancroft. An integral and major division of The Bancroft Library, ROHO has as its purpose the creation of oral histories for archival use. Unlike some projects of other institutions that have come into being since its founding, the aim is not to assemble information for a specific research project or for publication by the Library itself. Rather, in the tradition of Hubert Howe Bancroft, these oral histories are created as primary resources for research to be preserved for all users, present and future. For this reason the tapes are carefully transcribed, indexed, illustrated, and made into typed volumes well bound in uniform blue buckram. Scholars may come to The Bancroft Library, or to any of the other institutions that purchase these volumes at cost, and either read the entire work or consult the indexes to read only those particular matters that interest them if they are not concerned with the full scope of the memoirist's interviews. The original tapes are also preserved to give a sense of the person's voice and of intonations that might be revelatory. The interviewer's questions and comments are made part of the transcription so that the reader may judge the significance of the way in which the speaker's basic text was brought into being. The intention, however, is not merely to get a speaker's offhand comments at the moment of interview but rather to elicit the memoirist's fullest knowledge. Thus a carefully trained and knowledgeable member of the staff questions the interviewee with skill and later permits the initial typescript to be altered or augmented so as to obtain fuller or more accurate documentation. The review of the original interview leads not only to a better work but also frequently to its supplementing by manuscripts, pertinent publications, and related photographs that the memoirist presents to The Bancroft Library. Whether or not such Catalogue I of the Regional Oral 3 History Office, 1954-1979 by-products are forthcoming, the oral histories are the desired documents. For over twenty-five years the Regional Oral History Office has significantly enhanced the collections that make The Bancroft Library a great reservoir of research material for scholarship in numerous important areas of knowledge. James D. Hart Director The Bancroft Library Oral History at Berkeley Oral history is a modern research technique for preserving knowledge of historical events as recounted by participants. In the past those who took part in or observed important events wrote their accounts in journals, diaries, or letters. In this century the writing of personal accounts has declined and the written exchanges that once preceded important decisions have been replaced by conferences and telephone calls. Through the recorded conversations of the oral history interview, scholars of future generations can find both the account of events and the dynamic quality of the ancient oral tradition. The Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading figures or well-placed witnesses to major events or trends in the history of Northern California, the west, and the nation for 25 years. As of this writing 468 interviews totalling 67,285 pages have been completed. This catalogue reflects the fact that at Berkeley although a few interviews are undertaken as single memoirs, most are undertaken as a series of related memoirs in several subject fields. The subject fields and persons for interviewing are recommended by many sources within the University and community-wide, and approved by the faculty. Because all interviews require outside funding, the selection is influenced by the availability of such funds. The Interview To answer the questions that arise both within and without the field of oral history of what exactly oral history is in terms of how it is done, we are listing in some detail our methods of procedure.