Hazel de Berg Award for Excellence in Oral History

The Award

The Oral History Association of Australia (OHAA) has established an award to recognise members who have made an outstanding contribution to the cause of oral history in Australia over a considerable period of time.

To commemorate her pioneering work in oral history, the award has been named the Hazel de Berg Award for Excellence in Oral History.

Criteria

The recipient shall be the nominee deemed by the National Committee of the OHAA to have, over a considerable period of time, made an outstanding contribution to oral history in Australia through one or more of the following:

the raising of awareness of oral history within the profession
the promotion of oral history within the history community
the recording and documentation of oral history
the preservation and archiving of oral history collections
such other contribution to oral history as the OHAA considers worthy of recognition

The award is open only to members of the OHAA.

Nominations for the Award

Nominations shall be type-written on the prescribed form.
Nominations should be brief, but present a persuasive case setting out the achievements and history of the nominee that will enable a comparative assessment to be made; they must be signed and dated by the nominator.
Nominations may be made by any Branch or member of the OHAA; there is no impediment to members nominating themselves.

Hazel de Berg Award Winners for Excellence in Oral History

                                                                                           Janis Wilton winner of the 2009 Hazel de Berg Award with Jan McCahon Marshall,
                                                                                                  National President, at the OHAA National Conference, Launceston 2009
                                                                                                                                         Photo credit:  Jill Cassidy

For more than thirty years Janis Wilton has raised awareness of oral history within the oral history profession, amongst historians, and within the general community. She is the author of many books about oral history as well as those based on extensive oral history research such as her ground-breaking Old Worlds and New Australia: the post-war migrant experience (Penguin 1984) and Golden Threads: the Chinese in Regional New South Wales 1850-1950 (2004), which was also the basis for a major touring exhibition and an historical resource website.

Oral history has been integral to her academic teaching career. She pioneered the teaching of oral history as a university subject in the 1980s, and has inspired many of her students to pursue oral history in varied and diverse ways in their subsequent careers. She is a passionate promoter of the relevance of oral history to academic research and history-writing.

Janis has provided a crucial link between international oral history movements and the practice and theory of oral history in Australia. From 1998 to 2006 she was a member of the Council of the International Oral History Association and served terms as journal editor, Vice President and President.

An early member of the Oral History Association of Australia, Janis has served several terms on the OHAA National Council. From 1982‑86 she co‑edited the OHAA Journal and recently helped to transform the Journal into a publication for both academic and general audiences. Her list of oral history collections and organisations in Australia was published by the OHAA and was successful in raising public awareness of the institutional support for oral history from local to national levels.

She is a true oral history enthusiast. Through her active involvement in oral history organisations, community-based projects, university teaching and her own research and writing, she continues to inspire and assist people and local communities to capture the power and beauty of people’s life stories.

Photo credit: Suzanne Mulligan
Michael Clarke receiving his Hazel de Berg Award
from Hazel’s daughter Diana Ritch  in 2007

Michael Clarke was awarded The Hazel de Berg Award for Excellence in Oral History,  at the National Conference, Queensland 2007

Michael Clarke commenced the Public Works Department's Oral History program in 1991; he chaired the committee until retiring as Chief Engineer in 1992, and remained a member until 2000. As manager of the Sydney Engineering Heritage Committee's Oral History Program he developed policies, procedures and training for volunteer interviewers as well as undertaking interviews himself.   Michael arranged for the master tapes, logs, biographies and related documents to be progressively donated to the State Library of NSW - they presently amount to 194 interviews. Since the Engineering Heritage Committee became a member of the Oral History Association of Australia in 1996, he has been its representative.  Michael's volunteer efforts have contributed significantly to the conduct of oral history within the engineering profession.  His work in developing the OHAA A Guide to Commissioning Oral History Projects has provided guidance for both oral historians and those wishing to engage their services.

Photo Credit: Cynthia Nadai
Beth Robertson is presented with her
Award by Hazel’s daughter Diana Ritch 2006

Beth Robertson became the inaugural Hazel de Berg Award recipient at the International Oral History Conference held in Sydney in 2006.

Beth Robertson has made outstanding contributions to oral history in Australia since joining the committee of the Oral History Association of Australia (South Australia) in 1981, in which she has had a long and distinguished career. As Oral History Officer at the State Library of South Australia Beth has been an exceptional advocate for the crucial significance of oral history collections to Australia's national heritage. She has been an inspiring mentor and her personality and enthusiasm has encouraged many oral historians to deposit their collections with libraries and other collections around Australia. Beth is probably most widely known for the Oral History Handbook  first published in 1983.  She published the most recent edition in 2006 with an entirely new chapter on digital recording.  The Handbook is the national standard for Australia.

Hazel de Berg and her passion for oral history

Hazel de Berg offered her services to the Royal Blind Society to record for ‘Talking books for the Blind’. She chose to read Dame Mary Gilmore’s ‘Old Days, Old Ways’ and was taught how to use the reel to reel tape recorder. On March 18 1957 she visited Dame Mary in her Kings Cross apartment to invite her to say a few words on the tape. The ‘interview’ lasted 1 minute and 21 seconds – and Hazel was hooked! Interviewing on tape was to be her passion for the rest of her life.

Hazel was determined to interview other writers, novelists, poets, dramatists, journalists and historians. Prompted by Sir William Dobell’s just completed portrait in 1957 of Dame Mary she embarked on interviewing artists. She also interviewed actors, scientists, musicians and a few politicians. Before she was married she had been a professional photographer and she almost always took a picture of her interviewees.

In the early 1960s the then National Librarian, Harold (later Sir Harold) White, came to hear of Hazel’s endeavours. Because he had been introduced to oral history on a visit to Columbia University in New York in the late 1940s he encouraged her to place her recordings in the National Library of Australia. She was delighted that the Library would furnish a permanent home for her beloved recordings.  Indeed they formed the foundation of the oral history collection in the National Library.

In 1971 Hazel was formally contracted to the Library to do 60 interviews a year. This she carried out so conscientiously that in 1984 when she died suddenly of a heart attack, she had recorded just over 1300 interviews. These have been listed and described in a special catalogue published by the National Library in 1989. All of her interviews are fully transcribed.

The Hazel de Berg Award is for excellence in oral history. Excellence is what she strived for. She was always interested in the process of interviewing and when asked many times which was her best interview she always replied ‘the next one’. That tells us a great deal about the woman and in addition encourages us all to keep on trying!

Hazel’s family has donated the beautiful glass sculpture which has now been awarded to two members of the Oral History Association of Australia, Beth Robertson and Michael Clarke. It was presented for the first time at the international oral history conference in Sydney in 2006 and again last year at the Queensland conference. Just as her collection is for all time so the presentation to the successful recipient will be a feature of the national biennial conferences – forever.

Rosemary Block