Add MS 89318/1/1

Contains records from both pre- and post-formation of the Oral History Society. Much of the content comprises Patrick Saul's correspondence (incoming and outgoing) and documents relating to oral history activities such as sourcing copies of oral history interviews from projects around England, to join the archival sound collections at the British Institute of Recorded Sound, which Saul was director of. This includes applications for funding to the Social Science Research Council, to establish a Central Oral History Unit at the BIRS.

Also contains:

• OHS Newsletter, Summer 1974
• The Oral History Occasional News Sheet No. 1, 1970. This includes a report about a conference on 13 Dec 1970, the first national meeting of oral historians, which led to the formation of a committee to address the needs identified at that conference.
• A document titled 'The British Institute of Recorded Sound and Oral History' which outlines the BIRS' case for hosting the Central Oral History Unit.

In addition to information about the origins of the OHS, the file contains information pertaining to wider concerns within related topics such as sound recording and broadcasting, sound archiving (especially the need for this given an increasing range of sound recording genres) as well as methods of social history research (and attitudes to these).