Oral History Collection Development Policy

The Duke University Medical Center Archives will actively seek to collect oral histories from people who can relate relevant information about the Duke University Medical Center and Health System. These people may include doctors, administrators, patients, nurses, staff, community members, politicians, etc.; but the focus of the interviews will be on the culture and growth of the medical center and health system and how those issues intersect with the lives of individuals. The oral history program may also seek to capture a sense of the lives of its interviewees themselves and how these individual lives affect these changes and reflect this culture.

The oral history program will endeavor to support the existing and planned collections in the Duke University Medical Center Archives; however, there may be times when, by purposeful design, the oral history program will seek to collect stories from people who are not represented in the documentation within the archives but whose stories are nevertheless important in understanding the history of the medical center and health system.

The oral history program will not actively seek to collect stories of people who have no relationship to the Duke University Medical Center and Health System or the larger issues that impact it.