Oral history interviews allow us to document and chronicle people's stories; stories that might otherwise not be included in the historical record.

Students are often taught when to use a particular method and how to use it, but not how to effectively write up their research plan and then later their research results.

I may be biased, but I think the cover art is stunning.

I had published a co-edited book with Oxford a decade ago, my first book actually. Years later I found myself having lunch with Lori Stone, who was an editor at Oxford at that time. We connected at a conference and over the course of lunch she told me about a wonderful new series she had just developed called Understanding Research.

My book, Oral History: Understanding Qualitative Research is about how researchers use this method and how to write up their oral history projects so that audiences can read them. It's important that researchers have many different tools available to study people's lives and the cultures we live in. I think oral history is a most needed and uniquely important strategy.

Oral history interviews allow us to document and chronicle people's stories; stories that might otherwise not be included in the historical record.

Moreover, it is so important that people have the opportunity to share their stories and have them documented. There have been large-scale oral history projects after many events, from September 11th to Hurricane Katrina. Many oral history projects are much more confined, but equally valuable. We can learn about different working conditions, living conditions, trauma experiences and much more through oral history.