Educators' Experiences With Public Libraries: Weaving Oral History Tapestries

• In Event: The Educative Life

Abstract

Oral history projects have the potential to elevate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge about education. They also have the power to contribute to social justice projects. This oral history project was designed to investigate the impact libraries have on educators’ stories about themselves and their students within the context of a democracy. A number of elicitation devices were used in the context of oral history interviews including photographs, archival documents, fiction and nonfiction books about library experiences, storytelling prompts, and interview questions. Results included rich multimodal vignettes representing a variety of ways libraries impacted the educational biographies of five educators and taken together offer researchers new ways to think about collective oral history projects.

Author

• Thalia Mulvihill, Ball State University