SFOHA's logo of a space-suited dog listening to a grammaphone

Science Fiction Oral History Association

The Science Fiction Oral History Association (SFOHA) is a non-profit organization that maintains an archive of audio and video recordings of historic people and events related to science fiction and fantasy. SFOHA was founded in 1975 at the first ConFusion, in Michigan. Its ongoing mission is to capture our future historical legends (both Fan and Pro) on tape for other generations to enjoy and understand. SFOHA does recordings at conferences and in private and especially appreciates opportunities to record interviews.

Recent and Upcoming Activities

Visit The Time Traveler Show to hear material brought forward in time from our archives.

We have recently sent copies of tapes from the archive to various transcription and journalistic research projects. Please contact us if you would like to access something in the archive.

Latest Recordings Acquired are being gathered over here. If you are interested in helping to maintain the archive catalog, please contact us at info@sfoha.org.

SFOHA Catalog Online

The 1998 version of the SFOHA Archive Catalog is online here. It is organized mainly by Series, which were often focused on the person recording, or somesuch. We are working on getting a fully searchable database set up.

We do not have permission to distribute all of these recordings, but many of them are already present at deposit collections at University Libraries in Michigan, Kansas, and New Mexico. We are currently working with librarians at those locations to confirm what their holdings are and how the public can access them.

Volunteering

SFOHA enthusiastically welcomes volunteers both near and far who would like to help by recording audio and/or video material for our archives. To aid you in this purpose, we are now providing a release form (44kb MS Word). SFOHA can provide the best distribution and access to our archive material if the people who appear or are heard can be persuaded to fill out this form specifying what rights they release to us. There is also a membership form on the back.

    SFOHA welcomes contributions to the archives from personal collections. Please make sure each recording donated to SFOHA is clearly labeled with the date of the recording, the location or event of the recording, and, when possible, the subject and the people present in the recording. It's also good to let us know who made the recording, using what equipment. Additional descriptive material about the recordings will be entered into our catalog if included; if the recording came form a convention, it would be handy for us if you would just include a copy of the pocket and/or program book of the convention itself. Contributions to the archives should be sent to SFOHA c/o William Murphy, 509 Dartmoor Rd, Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4511.

We also invite people to start their own chapters of SFOHA. (more info.)

Call for volunteers for Worldcon

We are seeking volunteers to help record events at any future Worldcon. Please contact us at info@sfoha.org if you are interested in helping out.

Membership

Membership in SFOHA costs $5 per year. Alternatively, an active membership is available to anyone who dontates 3 or more recordings that SFOHA does not have already to our archive. Clubs can also join SFOHA.
A membership subscription can be sent (payable to SFOHA) to:
    509 Dartmoor Rd
    Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4511
Or you can make donations or pay a membership online through paypal by clicking on the button below.
We also invite people to make a $50 contribution specifically to fund the professional transfer of a reel-to-reel recording to modern media. Such contributions from Reel Supporters will be recognized in the newsletter and on this website.
Past Newsletters
(We are going to send a new newsletter soon.)

A handbook called the SFOHA Interviewing Guide is also available to members by request.

SFOHA Talk List

There is a discussion list for those who are interested in Science Fiction Oral History. It is called SFOHA Talk. This is an open subscription list. To subscribe, send an email to
talk-request@sfoha.org with "subscribe" in the body of the message. Standard Majordomo list requests can be sent to the talk-request@sfoha.org address (subscribe, unsubscribe, help, who, etc.).

To post messages to the list you send them to talk@sfoha.org.

We hope this will be an active forum for people to discuss the techniques and other details of science fiction oral history in general, and SFOHA in particular.

Board of Directors

President: Anne KG Murphy
Vice President: Mike Gardiner
Treasurer: Chad Childers
Secretary: Stephen Lucchetti
Director at Large: William J. Murphy
Past President: David Gardner

The Board operates under the following Bylaws (last revised in 2004).

Upcoming Board Meetings:

Sunday, July 27, 2 pm at Chad's house Sunday, September 7, 2 pm at Stephen's house

Contacting SFOHA

email: info@sfoha.org

Mail:

    SFOHA
    509 Dartmoor Rd
    Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4511

Rest in Peace, Big Hearted Howard

Rest in Peace, Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
1923-2002

 

Last updated July 9, 2008

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