|
ALEXANDER STREET INDEXES 2,300 ORAL
HISTORY COLLECTIONS - MAKES LIST AVAILABLE FREE ONLINE
[PDF version]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Jennifer Heffelfinger
Alexander Street Press, LLC
jheffelfinger@alexanderstreet.com
800-889-5937 ext. 5
(December 17, 2003 – Alexandria, VA) Oral histories contain
rare and personal insights into everything from human rights abuses
during apartheid in South Africa to life as a Japanese American after
the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet, trapped on cassettes and hidden
in corners of the Internet, the personal stories of millions of people
have been largely inaccessible to the scholars who need them most.
Alexander Street Press is bringing oral history to the forefront
of research with an index of English-language collections, Oral
History Online.
With 2,300 collections already identified, and more
to come, Oral History Online will contain details of untold
value for the study of politics, women and gender, race relations,
labor, immigrants,
health and medicine, history, and more. At launch, the index will
include direct links to more than 2,000 video files, 1,000 audio
files, and 10,000 to 20,000 pages of full text. Given the nature
of oral histories, much of the material has been fugitive and hard-to-find.
Oral History Online will provide a single point of access to these
collections, and give researchers deeper reach into the narrations
with Alexander Street’s award-winning Semantic IndexingTM.
Nine different index fields, including narrator’s age, race,
occupation, place of interview, historical event discussed, and more,
will give users the power to now examine issues very specifically – for
example, the perceptions of African-American women over 50 from Spokane,
Washington on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
In anticipation of the launch of Oral History Online in early 2004,
Alexander Street invites oral historians, librarians, and scholars
in every discipline to view the growing list of collections. The
list, which includes live links to the repository Websites, is
freely available at http://alexanderstreet.com. Registering a collection
with the index is also free at the Alexander Street Website.
Oral History Online is available for individual and institutional
subscription early in early 2004. The A guided tour and a form
to request free trials are online at http://alexanderstreet.com.
To
arrange review access to Oral History Online, please contact Jennifer
Heffelfinger, Manager, Marketing and Public Relations, at (800)
889-5937 ext. 5, or jheffelfinger@alexanderstreet.com.
AWARDED *BEST CONTENT* AND *BEST CONTRACT OPTIONS*
THE CHARLESTON
ADVISOR'S 2003 READER'S CHOICE AWARDS
Alexander Street Press, L.L.C., is an academic publisher of electronic
full-text databases in the humanities and social sciences. Founded
in June 2000, the company publishes collections in history, literature,
women’s studies, sociology, ethnic and diversity studies, popular
culture, film studies, the arts, and other areas. Alexander Street
Press is located in Alexandria, Virginia.
Editors: For additional information on Alexander Street Press and
its products, please contact
Eileen Lawrence, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, 800-889-5937,
email lawrence@alexanderstreet.com, or visit http://alexanderstreet.com.
###
|
