Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

As part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Institute for Social Research, individuals connected with the history were interviewed. Excerpts of the videotaped interviews were used to produce "In the Public Interest: Fifty years of Social Research." Includes videotaped interviews with ISR personalities and typed transcripts of the interviews. For some interviews only a transcript is available. A copy of the final product excerpted from the interviews is included along with digital materials containing copies of the transcripts.

During 1997-1998, as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of ISR, a series of filmed interviews were conducted by Erik Austin with individuals connected with the history of ISR. The interviews were excerpted and used to produce the videotape history In the Public Interest: Fifty Years of Social Research. Documentation from this project includes a copy of the final video, videotaped interviews with individuals associated with ISR, and typed transcripts of the interviews. The records are arranged as two series: Videotapes and Transcripts.

The Videotapes series (29 VHS tapes) includes a copy of In the Public Interest: Fifty Years of Social Research a copy made from a 1956 University of Michigan television program featuring Angus Campbell, and 27 videotapes of interviews from 1997-1998. The Transcripts series contains written transcriptions of the interviews, along with a digital convenience copy of the written text. The digital material contains the text of the interview transcripts in Microsoft Word, PDF and TXT formats. Researchers should note that there are some interviews for which only a transcript is available. As such, the transcript series is more comprehensive than the videotape series.