What’s new?

In a word: everything. While we’ve integrated most of the content from our old site, it has all been repackaged and rearranged so that the site is easier to navigate and delivers a better user experience. In addition to improving the general layout of the website, we’ve also started the process of improving its overall accessibility.

You can likely find most of the things you’re looking for  via our landing page or the header menu. The “About” menu has a dropdown that contains information about us, our collaborations, and links to info about our physical resources and online educational resources. Our latest News is still front-page, but we’ve corralled all the “old-news” into a single page, should you want to browse, or find something specific. Our improved Calendar shows both recent and upcoming events, includes an integrated online registration option where applicable, and we are currently in the process of resurrecting our secure online payment option for both event registration and Membership renewal. 

It was important to us that the new site be able to display the work produced in the Centre. So we are showcasing the Projects and Partnerships we are fortunate to be a part of, and highlighting the many great Stories our members, collaborators, and staff have produced. All of our stories are now accessible via our front page; you can choose to peruse the whole lot, or choose to Read, Listen, or Watch.

What’s missing?

A few problems with the old site have carried over to the new site.  For example, some of the alternative text for images is still missing and our older audio/video content lacks transcriptions/closed captioning. Going forward, we are committed to improving and maintaining the overall accessibility of the Oral History Centre website so that this new user experience is better for everyone.

Some of you may notice the disappearance of the Guide to Oral History Collections in Canada. While the Guide is an important resource in discovering existing oral history collections in Canada, over time it became clear to us that the integration of the Guide in its previous format was, at best, confusing; it was not always clear what you were looking at, or how to go about finding the oral history collections it included. We have preserved this database, and are carefully considering options for re-publishing its contents in a more user-friendly format.

We’ve also eliminated the newsletter sign-up. You get enough email. Since our newsletter consisted primarily of news and upcoming events that are published on our website, we trust that you’ll visit us here, or keep an eye on our social media, to keep abreast of our goings on. Eliminating the newsletter sign-up also allowed us to reduce the number of third-party applications that have access to your personal information. Most of the information you entrust us with is now managed through our own website, which we have outlined in greater detail in our Privacy Policy.

For the Future:

We hope that going forward we can to continue to build and improve. For now, our technical “Tutorials” are best accessed via desktop; going forward we hope to improve their usability across platforms. We also hope to bring you more online tutorials and resources, so that you can access information when you need it, rather than having to make requests and wait for us. We’re confident that our new site will allow us greater flexibility going forward, so that we are able to provide a greater variety of content and resources.

We hope that you enjoy the new site. If you can’t find something you need, or have any concerns, please Contact Us.