Regional Oral History Office

The Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) is part of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The office was founded in 1954. ROHO conducts, analyzes, teaches, and preserves oral history interviews on a wide range of topics related to the history of California and the United States. ROHO staff also conduct research on a wide range of historical topics, utilizing oral history as a central primary source to their scholarship.

Since its founding in 1954, ROHO has conducted thousands of interviews in a wide variety of subject areas ranging from law and jurisprudence to food and wine. ROHO features especially strong collections on the development of the arts and letters, science and technology, and labor, social, and community history in California. ROHO has also conducted numerous interviews on the history of the University of California. ROHO's interviews with scientists include Nobel Prize winners such as Arthur Kornberg, Paul Berg, Donald A. Glaser, and Charles Townes. Other notable interviews with scientists include Herbert Boyer and Stanley N. Cohen. ROHO has also conducted significant oral histories with well known artists and authors, such as Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Carl Rakosi.

ROHO houses valuable collections of oral histories related to women's suffrage and the home front during World War II.

The interviews conducted by ROHO are deposited in over 700 manuscript libraries worldwide. Many of the interviews are accessible online. The Bancroft Library also houses the original tapes for all of the interviews conducted by ROHO. Once completed, the oral histories are referenced by both scholars and students around the world.

Between 1958 and 2000, Willa Baum directed ROHO. Under her tenure as director, ROHO amassed over 1,600 oral histories on a wide variety of subjects. The current director of ROHO is Richard Cándida-Smith.

External links

• Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
• About the Regional Oral History Office
• Program in Bioscience and Biotechnology Studies
• Suffragists Oral History Project
• Rosie the Riveter / WWII American Homefront oral history project