Oral History Association of Australia - Queensland

The South-East Queensland Branch of the Oral History Association of Australia formed on 9 December 1981 at a meeting attended by approximately 30 people at the University of Queensland Library.

Staff from the university library and the State Library of Queensland were particularly supportive of forming a branch.  Names familiar to Queensland history were represented at the first meeting including the meeting chairman Dr Rod Fisher, former lecturer in history at the University of Queensland, Helen Bennett active member of the Brisbane History Group, heritage specialist Marjorie Roe, University of Queensland Library and Margaret O’Hagan from the Fryer Library.  Lesley Singh and OHAA life member Sue Pechey were also present. 

At the meeting, reference was made to a large oral history project taking place in North Queensland by Carol Edmundson, and the establishment of branches in other states; and so, the journey of a OHAA branch in Queensland was begun.. 

From the beginning the branch was active and ran many training workshops and seminars.  The first project undertaken by the new branch was to work with Louise Douglas, setting up an oral history project to produce material about the depression years for part of what became a major Bicentennial work Australians. A Historical Library¹

In 1990 Ros McCormack, a field officer with the John Oxley Library (JOL) joined the South East Queensland Branch of the OHAA. The following year Niles Elvery, a librarian, took over the field officer position when Ros resigned. The branch changed its name and its focus from “Southeast Queensland” to embrace the whole state and it became the Queensland Branch of the OHAA. In that same year, other milestones occurred with the branch convening the Oral History Association Biennial Conference and the Biennial General Meeting at the University of Queensland. 

Niles Elvery assisted the Queensland branch by “providing facilities for mailing questionnaires and storing information collected for what will be a Directory of Oral History Projects and Products in Queensland”².  When Niles commenced oral history work in 1991, the Library had one CP430 Marantz cassette recorder and one set of Sennheiser professional microphones to accompany the recorder.  After writing a report about the current state of oral history at the State Library of Queensland (SLQ), he received permission to visit the National Library of Australia and South Australia State Library to investigate their oral history programs.  He spent two days at each institution reviewing their collections, procedures and policies.  On his return, he recommended that the State Library of Queensland set up an oral history program. 

The recommendations that were actioned as a result of the report included:

1. Encourage the donation of Oral History recordings to the John Oxley Library;
2. Set up the loan of equipment to interviewers providing they agreed to donate a copy of the recording to the library;
3. Mirror the documentation for the oral history program on documents in use at the State Library of South Australia and the National Library of Australia.

Niles, who now works at the State Archives in Brisbane, became an active president of the OHAA (Qld) branch and this enabled him to provide the following services to the association:

1. branch meetings held in the JOL reading room;
2. weekend seminars in the reading room without cost to the Association;
3. state wide conferences organised as part of his field officer’s role
4. developing a collaborative role with the Association which built networks and the collection.

Niles also ran workshops for the association; both on behalf of JOL and in his own time and these were not restricted to SE Queensland locations.  These workshops were undertaken at the invitation of community groups or libraries and partly funded by them.  Niles also became the state representative on national oral history projects such as the ‘Once Upon a Wireless’ project, recording interviews with personalities from the radio industry.  He was also involved in the ‘Bringing them Home’ report and the National Library of Australia donated copies to the SLQ because of this relationship.