Community Oral History Toolkit

Mary Kay Quinlan Ph.D. is associate dean emerita at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications where she taught for more than twenty years and is co-author of several oral history books. She edited the Oral History Association Newsletter for thirty-three years. In 2022 she was inducted into the Marian Andersen Nebraska Women Journalists Hall of Fame, and in 2024 the Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region organization presented to her the Forrest C. Pogue Award for Excellence in Oral History.

Barbara W. Sommer M.A. has over fifty years of experience in the public history and oral history. She is a long-time member of the Oral History Association (OHA), and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums. Her publications include The Oral History Manual (1st-4th editions), Indigenous Oral History Manual: Canada and the United States (2024), and Practicing Oral History in Historical Organizations (2015). She also is the author of the award-winning book Hard Work and a Good Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota (2008, re-issued in 2022). She is a member of the Honorary Council of the Minnesota Historical Society, recognized for her work in oral history.

Nancy MacKay MLIS is a California-based oral historian, archivist, author, and educator. As an academic librarian she founded and managed the Oakland Living History Program at Mills College (now Northeastern University), where she worked as a librarian for twenty-two years. She is the author of Curating Oral Histories: From Interview to Archive, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2016) and the editor of the Routledge Practicing Oral History book series, with fourteen titles currently in print.