Forms, Formations, and Reforms

Abstract

ABSTRACT Oral history release forms are critical for documenting narrator intentions around access to and use of interviews, a key component of ethically managing this document type. Unfortunately, repositories are full of interviews with missing or problematic releases. To explain this phenomenon, the author reviews historical archival and oral history literature to trace the development of release form conventions and the historical trends in practice that explain the current state of documentation in archives. Important trends in this trajectory include professionalization of oral history, decades of inconsistent application of best practices, siloed discourses of archivists and oral historians, institutional review boards, and changing access expectations in the age of the Internet. The author also assesses current positive professional trends to prevent future release form problems and analyzes release form scenarios that may remain stubbornly at the discretion of archivists’ professional judgment or values.