Help

Help

The Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony (ALOT)  was a scholarly research and archival project, founded in 2010.

As of November 2021, we are no longer creating user accounts, adding new content, or accepting donations.

Contact, access for researchers, and further information

For all questions and requests, including access to protected interviews, contact Special Collections and Rare Books at the SFU Library: scrb@sfu.ca.

Acknowledgements

ALOT was founded and created by El Chenier, Project Director and Associate Professor, Department of History, Simon Fraser University. 

We are grateful to everyone who contributed to this project. 


This is a small help section for visitors to the website. Here you will find some information about how to interact with the site and also how to learn a few things about how to make and submit your own interviews.

Oral Interviews

  • What Is An Oral Interview?
    Every day we tell stories. When we’re recounting our Friday night adventures to a co-worker, or promising ourselves we’ll get to the housecleaning tomorrow, we’re telling stories. We use stories to make sense of the world around us, and to build relationships with each other. Oral history and oral testimony is one kind of story-telling.
  • Why Are Oral Histories Important?
    There are lots of reasons why people take an interest in history. Perhaps the most common one is that it shores up their identity. Look no further than the popular television program “Who Do You Think You Are?", which uses a splash of genetic testing but mostly good old-fashioned archival research to reveal celebrities’ family heritage. 
  • How to Conduct an Oral History Interview
    There are two basic types of oral history interviews: one that is narrowly focused on a very specific topic, such as a particular neighbourhood, sports team, or school, and another that is focussed on the arc of a person’s life. The second type is called a life course interview. Learn about how to conduct your own interview with tips, and our Oral History Interview Webinar!

Website Basics

  • Tagging Interviews
    By helping to tag interviews on the site, you can contribute to ALOT through making the interviews more findable, better described, and more useful for you and other contributors!
  • Rating Interviews
    When logged in, you have the ability to rate an interview. Just hover over the stars and select how many you would like to assign to an interview, out of a possible 5.
  • Submitting Your Interviews
    Once you have an account, you will be able to submit your own interviews.

Forms

  • Consent Forms
  • Download participant consent forms for your own interviews. This will ensure that interview participants understand how their interviews are being used and consent to having them posted in our archive. 
  • Researcher Access Forms
  • If you are looking to gain access to our protected and semi-protected collections, you will need to fill out this form.