Clio's talkative daughther goes digital: the interplay between technology and oral accounts as historical data.

The purpose of this article is to show how the interplay between technology and social-cultural change influenced the creation and appreciation of oral history interviews and the current status of collections of audiovisual life stories as a narrative data type that can be used for a variety of scholarly purposes. The contribution starts with a description of the change in status of oral sources in the late nineteenth century and the parallel technological innovation. The next stage presented is the early evolution of the practice of interviewing in relation to bearing witness to crises and conflict in the first half of the twentieth century. Then the emergence of the postwar social movement is described and its central role in developing a pluralist perspective on history by giving voice to minority groups through collecting life stories and making them public. The following section discusses the impact of the digital turn and the introduction of the Internet on historical culture in general and on oral history in particular. The final section deals with the potential of information and communications technology (ICT) for the accessibility and analysis of digital oral history.