Historic Preservation Oral History Transcripts and Tapes, 1959-1989

Throughout his career, Hosmer interviewed many prominent individuals in the historic preservation field. This series consists of the tape recordings and transcripts of interviews which Hosmer conducted as part of his own research and for a separate project funded by the Eastern National Park and Monument Association.

There are three divisions in this series. The first includes transcripts of eighty-three of Hosmer's Eastern National Park and Monument Association interviews completed between 1981 and 1986. The second contains six transcripts of "Historic Preservation Interviews" conducted by Hosmer between 1959 and 1985 as well as miscellaneous--and often incomplete--interview transcripts which Hosmer collected from other repositories. Notes regarding transcripts of interviews which he did not conduct are also included. The originating repositories include Columbia University's Oral History Research Office, the University of California at Berkeley's Bancroft Library, and the National Park Service Archives at the Harpers Ferry Center. Several folders containing lists of interviews, partial indexes, and a notebook (as well as an incomplete transcript) on the 1962 interview with Horace M. Albright constitute the third division in this series, "Interview Notes and Indexes."

The copyright residing in the oral history interviews is shared by the interviewer and the interviewee, and, therefore, permission must be secured before citing or quoting from the transcripts in a publication. Hosmer, as the interviewer, allowed for open research access to all portions of the interviews that he controlled, and the University of Maryland Libraries made a systematic effort to obtain permission to open as many of the transcripts for research use as possible. There are three levels of restriction for the use of the materials in this series. Many of the interviewees consented to unrestricted use of their transcripts; others required researchers to obtain written permission before citing or quoting from their transcripts. Finally, some interviewees wanted their transcripts closed entirely either permanently or for the remainder of their lives.

The Archives and Manuscript Department staff has devised a numerical code to indicate conditions of access within the folder listing and has placed corresponding colored dots on the folders themselves: 1) No restrictions (green dot); 2) Open, but permission required for quotation (yellow dot); 3) Closed (red dot).

Each section of oral history transcripts is arranged alphabetically by the surname of the person interviewed. Eastern National Park and Monument Association interviews that are closed have been separated and arranged alphabetically in the first two boxes of the series. The cassette tapes from which the transcripts of the Eastern National Park and Monument Association transcripts were taken form a part of this series; a listing of these tapes appears in Appendix 2. The tapes fall under the same restrictions as the transcripts.

A detailed index to Hosmer's oral history interviews is available.