Library Briefings

U.N. policy-makers' oral histories

Northwestern gains exclusive access to Yale-U.N. interviews

Northwestern University Library has become the first and only institution to offer online access to the written transcripts of the Yale-UN Oral History Project. More than 170 interviews with key players in major events in which the United Nations was involved were audio-taped between 1989 and 1991 and from 1996 to 2002. Written transcripts were made from the audio-tapes and, until now, were exclusively available at the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold Library and the Yale University Library. At the request of Assistant Professor Ian Hurd, of the Department of Political Science, the Library first inquired about obtaining a few selected transcripts. Approximately six months later, arrangements were completed to receive the entire sets in an electronic format. Timothy Hagen, Serials Electronic Resources Librarian, mounted the Word and PDF files onto a secure Web site, designed an introductory Web page, and constructed a fully analyzed catalog record.

The Yale-UN Oral History Project was conducted in two stages, first by the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and then by UN Studies, both of Yale University. Its aim is to make available to scholars the experiences of people who were in key positions as certain historical events unfolded. Selected subjects include, for example, the Middle East wars (with, e.g., Sir Guy Millard), the founding of Israel (with Abba Eban), Nicaragua (Violeta Chamorro), the UN Special Commission to investigate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (Scott Ritter), the history of the UN (Kofi Annan), the Congo during the 1960s, Cambodia, and other topics. The earliest set of interviews is indexed by speaker and subject. The later set has a list of speakers only. This resource will be of value to students at all levels of study, and to historians, scholars of international relations and comparative politics, and others with interests in world affairs, broadly, and in peace, security, conflict resolution, and international organizations, in particular.

For an interesting account of the advantages and disadvantages of oral personal histories, written by the Director and Deputy Director of the Yale-UN project, see the article, "Yale-UN Oral History Project," in the UN Chronicle (issue 2, 2003 or online).

Lucy Lyons,
Collections Analysis and Subject Bibliographer