The Value Of Oral Archives To Social Memory And Its Making Process

Archives are important carriers of the inheritance of history. As a new form ofarchives, oral archives play a role in recalling people’s memories, reproducinghistorical events and living environment of certain period. Guided by certain clues,oral archives tracing back to one’s memory, help historians to resume the originalfacts of history, and strike a chord with society by eliciting narrator’s emotion.Therefore, oral archives are able to make a contribution to archives compilation andhistory research, as well as the construction and development of social memory.The value of oral archives can be seen in many aspects. In this article, the valueof oral archives in social memory has been choosen as major issue. Based on oralarchives procedure, why oral archives can act on social memory, how oral archivesattribute to social memory and the result of archives affect social momery will befully explained in this article. After defining oral archives and social memory, thepossibility and reality of our hypothesis will be carefully argued, according to thefeature of oral archives and social memory. Then the reciproncal actions or effectsbetween oral archives and social memory can be finally elaborated. To build a preciseexplanation, the planning, collection, interview, organization, publishing, preservationand retrieve of oral archives will be highlighted in this article, followed by socialmemory’s changes when oral archives propagate in messes.