At its most basic definition, oral history is an account of the past
             conveyed through word of mouth. Oral history tells of cultures and
             individuals by presenting oral commentary of events, situations and
             feelings of individuals. Oral history has made important contributions to
             the ways in which historians and the general public understands and
             interprets the past. (Stursberg 1997) The beginning of the modern form of
             oral history is said have originated with Allan Nevins of Columbia
             University. According to Peter Stursberg, in his Canadian Encyclopedia
             article on oral history, the modern oral-history movement began in 1948
             when Nevin interviewed subjects accompanied by a graduate student who took
             long hand notes. Nevin evoked a sort of stream of consciousness, or as
             Stursberg calls it, "stream of reminiscences" from his subjects.
             Oral histories provide an effective tool that allows historians and
             anthropologists a chance to preserve oral traditions, skills and crafts.
             (Vansina 129) In her book, "Oral Tradition as History," Jan Vansina writes
             that, "The full cultural or individual significance of quilting or the
             making of a musical instrument can only be obtained through the nuance and
             subtlety of oral language. Thus we can learn much from a personal history
             that we could never obtain from a textbook."
             The practice and method of oral history has had a tradition probably
             as long as history itself. Herodotus used the method of interviewing
             survivors' experiences about the past for his account of the Persian wars
             in the 5th century BC for example. (Stursberg) Ancient cultures would
             pass down the history of their tribes using the oral tradition. Chosen
             tribal "historians" would memorize long tracks, usually in the forms of
             poems or ballads, of tribal history and be charged with maintaining the
             facts in memory and passing it down to following generations. (Vansina,
             ...