The 1947 Partition Archive
crowd-sources the collection of
Partition witness interviews and conducts free classes, in the form of an online
Oral History Workshop, to train volunteers in story-collection and interviewing techniques. As of June 2025, over 12,000 interviews have been collected from more than 450 cities and villages in 14 countries including
India,
Pakistan,
Bangladesh,
Nepal,
Bhutan, the
United States, the
United Kingdom, and
Israel among others. These interviews are documented in diverse languages and dialects. The Archive's website includes a Story Map that shows the migration patterns of each interviewee. The Archive's methods of crowdsourcing story collection include Story Scholars, a fellowship program in which individuals are chosen based on academic merit and prior experience to conduct interviews in a selected region, and Citizen Historians, a program in which volunteers can contribute Partition stories to the organization's website. Based on the Archive's digital media platforms, ordinary citizens across the globe are "invited to join free oral history webinar workshops to learn the basic techniques for documenting oral histories, as outlined by the
Oral History Association and
Baylor University’s open-source online resources." According to Dr Bhalla, "workshop attendees who successfully submit their first oral history interview, and it matches The Archive’s standards with its nine-point criteria, are certified as ‘Citizen Historian’ volunteers." ==See also==