The transcripts and audio for some oral histories have been digitized and are available through this database or through links in this database to Documenting the American South's project Oral Histories of the American South.
Users of this database should be aware that the information for some interviews is incomplete. Every database record includes an interviewee, interviewer, and an interview number. However, occupation, ethnicity, date of birth, and gender have not been assigned for every interviewee. There are abstracts for roughly half of the interviews represented here. Interview transcripts for a small but growing number of oral histories are available to be searched in this database.
Keyword searching of transcripts is imperfect. The search will cut off after 128,000 characters or roughly 60 pages for each transcript. Therefore, words at the end of lengthy transcripts will not register in a keyword search. In addition, optical character recognition technology is imprecise, and some characters were likely misread, resulting in imperfect searching. For example, "wife" may have been misread as "wise."
Transcripts are available for many of the interviews. Inaudible phrases may be indicated in the transcripts by a blank space, appearing: ( ) . Ellipses indicate a pause in speech. False starts are omitted and punctuation is added for the sake of clarity. It should be noted that transcripts vary somewhat in style and appearance. Early transcripts were corrected by hand; in later ones, corrections have been typewritten. Transcripts may contain errors. Abstracts or tape indexes exist for many interviews, and introductory biographical sketches have been prepared for some interviews. Some transcripts were returned to the interviewee for approval. If necessary, a revised transcript was prepared. In cases where transcripts have been significantly rewritten, a note to that effect is appended.
