Oral history: collecting women's history
Aletta wants to collect and preserve women’s oral history in digital form. To this end, Aletta is developing a fully searchable online digital video archive.
Firsthand accounts
People who personally experienced important historical events can give firsthand accounts of the events as they happened. These oral histories provide a broader context for the documents in the paper archives and help create a more complete picture. The first of these interviews are already available online. Users can search the content of the videos using the latest speech recognition technology.Search the video archive (on the Dutch website)
Oral history methodology
The interviewers use a technique known as the 'life story approach'. In this approach, questions are not limited to a specific period in the interviewee’s life, but span her or his entire life. You can find more information about this interview technique in the article 'Dance Around the Camera' from the book Traveling Heritages.Article “Dance around the camera”
Available interviews
Aletta aims at documenting the entire breadth of the feminist movements of the second half of the 20th century using oral history interviews. We are hoping to create a video archive of more than a hundred interviews, which will be an inspiration for current and future generations and will provide a unique source of information for academic research.The Women’s Health Movement
Aletta has recorded ten interviews with women (and one man) who played key roles in the Dutch Women’s Health Movement in the 1970s and 80s. Aletta worked in partnership with a research project at the Utrecht University entitled Geschiedenis van de Vrouwenhulpverlening (A History of the Dutch Women’s Health Movement). A documentary has been made using the raw interview material and historical film footage.Read more or order the DVD
Dolle Mina
Aletta has put together a series of interviews about Dolle Mina, a Dutch feminist activist group that was founded in 1969. Based on these oral history stories, Aletta developed a documentary.Read more or order the DVD
Support Oral history
The preservation of the oral history of Dutch women depends on your donations. Most of the financing for the oral history project comes from the Aletta Jacobs Fund, a fund supported by contributions from friends of Aletta. You can make a donation to the Aletta Jacobs Fund and specify the project you would like to support, or you can sponsor an entire video interview.Read morehttp://iiav.wikidot.com/