statement of purpose

Last revised: 11/30/09.
Approved by the Simmons College Institutional Review Board December, 2009.

The Oregon Extension Oral History Project seeks to document and place in historical context, through oral history interviews with faculty and alumni, the early years of the Oregon Extension (OE) program, from 1975-1980.

The research is being conducted as part of Anna Cook’s academic work as a Master’s student in the Simmons College dual-degree History/Archives Management program.

Oral history narrators participating in the project will complete a pre-interview questionnaire and participate in a digitally-recorded oral history interview, in person or by telephone. Narrators’ participation in the project is voluntary and they are free to end participation in the project at any point.

All materials recorded or otherwise documented during their participation will remain confidential until narrators have signed the Release Form, giving permission to Anna Cook to use the material and make it accessible to future researchers and the public.

A copy of the Release Form will be made available to all participants for review prior to the interview.

The oral history interviews and any associated documentation, if released, will be used in Anna Cook’s Master’s thesis in history. The thesis will be filed with Simmons College and made available to the public through the Simmons College library.

The interviews and associated documentation, including the finished thesis, will also be made accessible to the public through the Internet Archive project, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that collects and makes accessible, free of charge, a wide range of digital content of historical value to researchers and the public.

In addition, the material may also be donated to an archival repository for long-term preservation.