The Oral History Center (Centrum orální historie - COH) seeks to establish contacts and develop external cooperation with similar offices abroad. The COH considers such activities as higly important and that is why we have been trying to achive cooperation with a number of similarly specialized international institutes and university offices.
The most fruitful cooperation was established with the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies and the Southern Oral History Program at the Chapell Hill (Northern Carolina, USA). Furtherone, COH cooperates with Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam and it took part at a shared project with Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften Humboldt-Universität in Berlin.
We communicate on regular basis with the researchers of the New Culture Foundation (Bulgaria) and also with the Ethnology Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. A cooperation was also established with the British Library specialized on the oral history method application (http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/ohlinks.html) and the Nadácia Milana Šimečku in Bratislava, with German Institut für Geschichte und Biographie at the Fern–Universität, Endicott College in Beverly (in Massachusetts, USA), Centre for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies at the Texas University in Austin (Texas, USA), Center for Oral History at the University of Connecticut and finally with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts, USA).
Since 2002, COH has been a member of International Oral History Association, which is the top organisation providing the support to many oral history institutes around the world.
At home, COH has been cooperating for many years with the Archive of the Palacky University in Olomouc, the South Bohemia Museum in České Budějovice. To a less extent also with the independed non-profit association Mamapapa, the foundation Post Bellum which documents the destinies of Czechoslovas war veterans, and also with the foundation Gender Studies.
To acquaint the university students with the oral history method and to choose potential co-workers for particular projects among them is considered to be a very important task by the Oral History Center. Organised by the Center, half-yearly oral history courses and lectures take place on regular basis at a several Czech universities (Charles University Prague and Fakulta humanitních studií UK v Praze, University Palacky Olomouc, West Bohemia University Plzeň, Collegium Hieronymi Pragensis in Prague). The Center has also participated considerably in elaboration of a textbook whose aim is to aquaint the university students and the public with the oral history method and its application in research on modern history (vide M. Vaněk: Oral History. Methodological and Techical Procedures.) The Center has been awarded certificate of accreditation by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic for teaching oral history at history classes at secondary schools.
