About:

What is the project about?

Southland’s stories define who we are as a people and a province.
The Southland Oral History Project aims to capture these stories as a collective community memory by embracing important events in our local history, our traditions and diverse ways of life. Started in 2006, the Southland Oral History Project is led and supported by Heritage South and the Invercargill City Council.The collection includes both full life history interviews and topic-based interviews from around the Southland region. You can search our collection here using names, subjects and keywords.
On our database you will find information on the oral histories that we hold, you can read abstracts of many of the recordings and you can view photographs where these are available. In time we hope to further enrich the online experience by making audio extracts of the recordings available. If you want to listen to a recording you will need to visit the Invercargill City Library and they can be made available to you in our Archives Research Room. It is advisable to ring or e-mail in advance to make an appointment.