The oral histories of the Southwest Collection are discoverable via three different search platforms. Not every interview is included on each of these sites, so we do recommend reading the below guide for making the most of the Southwest Collection's oral history collections.
- Texas Tech University catalog
- Ideally suited for researchers looking for oral histories in conjunction with other broader research topics. Over half of our interviews have a worldcat catalog record, and will be discoverable through a catalog search of other materials found within the Texas Tech University libraries (and beyond). Most successful with looking for the name of the interviewee or general subject headings.
- Southwest Collection dspace site
- For remote researchers who have no way to visit our archive, any transcripts that are available will be housed on this site. Browseable by series, as well as other robust navigation and search tools. This is the only site that allows a full-text search function for precise words and topics spoken in an interview.
- Southwest Collection's Oral History Wiki
- For researchers who can visit the Southwest Collection in person and listen to interviews that are not transcribed. First launched in 2013, the wiki site is the digital version of the Southwest Collection's oral history abstract sheets. Our goal is for every interview to have its own web page that includes basic interview metadata and a list of keywords as written up by SWC staff. The site is entirely searchable, and most interviews also have "subject headings" at the bottom of each page that links together interviews in broader themes.
