Authorities in oral history and novices gathered in Gelman Library Saturday for an open seminar on the preservation of local histories.

The History Fair, sponsored by the Special Collections Department of Gelman Library, kicked off National Archives Week, which officially begins Monday. The special week is designed to generate interest in archival history.

“This event is intended as an outreach to increase awareness of archival history both on community and university grounds,” said La Nina Clayton, program coordinator and Special Collections Manuscripts librarian.

The conference featured three 45-minute presentations with discussions between speakers from various research centers, graduate students and Foggy Bottom residents.

“I’ve conducted workshops like these at Hershey, Pennsylvania, and in West Virginia as well,” University Archivist G. David Anderson said. “Sometimes they can be low-key, short three-hour events such as today’s, but they can also stretch as long as a full day and be quite intensive.”

Anderson’s presentation, “Oral History: Tips and Techniques,” included a roundtable discussion about oral history, which he defined as “a technique for generating and preserving original, historically interesting information from personal recollections by means of tape-recorded interviews.”

Anderson said while oral history is not 100 percent reliable, it eliminates the rehashing of old information and seeks new information, clarification and interpretation.

Donna Wells, curator of photographs at the Moorland-Springarn Research Center at Howard University, discussed the legalities of photo history and how to obtain rights to photos for archives.

Phil Olgivie, the senior associate for the International Institute of Tourism Studies and former D.C. archivist, discussed the 200-year history of the city plan using original and current street maps.

“Maps tend to be more informative than history texts when it comes to the field of geography,” Olgivie said. He laughed with audience members after disproving the myth that there is no J Street because George Washington did not like John Jay. City planners simply omitted the letter “J” because “J” and “I” were too similar, Olgivie said.

The program concluded with a tandem presentation from Francine Henderson, head of the Special Collections Department, and Alicia Miller, the University’s manager of Management Information Systems. They discussed methods of using news articles, video and audio recordings, oral histories, family trees and scrapbooks to gather information.

While the event attracted a variety of interested guests, more students, faculty and staff should be aware of department resources, Clayton said.

“Often a student or faculty member won’t realize that much of what we hold in our department is not available at the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian – where they usually look,” Clayton said.