Aug 5, 2026 · 33 min · 13 segments
The Memory Tapes is a new podcast from the National Library of Australia that brings history to life through the voices of the people who lived it. Drawing on one of the nation’s most significant oral…
Barbara LemonGuest
Greg DobbsHost
Before we dive into this really fascinating collection, tell me what is oral history and what does it tell us about our history that other collections can't?
thousands and thousands and thousands of years, but oral history as a perhaps a more formal discipline is the recording of those life stories.
Here at the National Library we have a style of recording oral history which is I suppose you could say birth to the present, cradle to not quite grave, because obviously you're not in your grave if you're reflecting on your life.
But it's really about telling life stories in order to shed light on events or things.
Our oral history collection began with recordings with people who were perhaps quite well known, often writers or authors or politicians and so on, but it has evolved over time to include a huge amount of social history.
And it's different to other collections because it's a highly democratic form of history recording, of storytelling.
So we work with oral historians who are trained in the art of interviewing, not in a journalistic style but in a way that encourages the interviewee to take time to reflect, to follow tangents when necessary, but to be gently guided through the telling of their own life story.
We do collect a small number of what we call formed collections, which are recordings that have taken place for other purposes by other people.
in other places at other times, but that might be highly nationally significant and needing preservation.
The catch with that sometimes is that when we commission histories, oral histories, we have very clear rights agreements around those in order to provide public access to them.
When you're collecting older formed collections, it can be harder to get those rights really clarified.
And of course, the National Library's primary aim is to make the material we hold accessible to the public.
Oral history is catalogued as any other collection format would be, as in recording by recording.
Before we dive into this really fascinating collection, tell me what is oral history and what does it tell us about our history that other collections can't?
thousands and thousands and thousands of years, but oral history as a perhaps a more formal discipline is the recording of those life stories.
Here at the National Library we have a style of recording oral history which is I suppose you could say birth to the present, cradle to not quite grave, because obviously you're not in your grave if you're reflecting on your life.
But it's really about telling life stories in order to shed light on events or things.
Our oral history collection began with recordings with people who were perhaps quite well known, often writers or authors or politicians and so on, but it has evolved over time to include a huge amount of social history.
And it's different to other collections because it's a highly democratic form of history recording, of storytelling.
So we work with oral historians who are trained in the art of interviewing, not in a journalistic style but in a way that encourages the interviewee to take time to reflect, to follow tangents when necessary, but to be gently guided through the telling of their own life story.
We do collect a small number of what we call formed collections, which are recordings that have taken place for other purposes by other people.
in other places at other times, but that might be highly nationally significant and needing preservation.
The catch with that sometimes is that when we commission histories, oral histories, we have very clear rights agreements around those in order to provide public access to them.
When you're collecting older formed collections, it can be harder to get those rights really clarified.
And of course, the National Library's primary aim is to make the material we hold accessible to the public.
Oral history is catalogued as any other collection format would be, as in recording by recording.
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