Happy Nowruz!

When our people use the word “’Eyd (celebration)” alone, they mean “Nowruz”. Undoubtedly Nowruz is the oldest most persistent and beautiful Iranian ceremony which is celebrated now from Tibet to Crimea. Nowruz is the unifying link of a great nation whose multi-thousand years of history has a big share in the world’s heritage of civilization, literature, art and culture. We congratulate this great celebration to all Iranians particularly our readers and wish a happy new Persian year for all of them.

The year we put behind, with all its ups and downs, was a fruitful year for Iranian Oral History. A big number of published books in the fields of Memoirs and holding numerous workshops for reviewing books and teaching oral history techniques, all together show that oral history is getting publicized among people particularly the ones who concern about culture. Iranian Oral History Website was also a part of this process which could succeed in publishing the hundredth issue despite all the shortcomings. We will begin the new Persian year by our 110th issue (April 10th 2013). In our 100th issue many scholars from different groups and fields of Iranian oral history works gifted us with their writings and words. We had asked all to criticize us, however, many showed their kindness and I had to thank all of them much sooner particularly Professor Ronald Grele, Professor Pablo Pozzi and Ms. Siobahn Warrinton. I should apologize for this delay.

Analyzing the received letters and lack of enough time for writing di not let me to write these lines sooner. We would thank all these dear friends and would try to use them in our future programs.

Some had suggested extending the time interval between two issues to a fortnight or more in order to have enough time for presenting longer and more academic articles. We consulted the journalism experts and finally decided to keep our publication period as what it is. However, working on academic articles is something that we cannot ignore. Based on the dialogues we made with the directors of “Resistance Culture and literature Studies and Researches Center” and also “Soureh Mehr Publication Company”, we may republish our academic articles which mostly have been published on our website before and also the new ones that we may receive in future, in a bilingual paper issue which would be called “Iranian Oral History Book of Season”.

We may also hold series of professional meetings with the presence of oral history experts to discuss challenging issues. One goal for these meetings is to connect oral history activists in different places and institutes to conduct joint projects and increase the productivity by sharing the existing facilities and capabilities in different institutes. We hope this can be a step toward publicizing oral history in Iran. We invite all interested people to send us their viewpoints and suggestions for this section.

Photography section which was inaccessible for some time is activated again with some changes. This section needs its own programing and the changes may happen step by step. So be patient for this part.

The successful experience for “Polls” have made us determined to present more questions about the concerned issues Iranian in oral history. If you have suggestions in this regard send it to us.
We have some other programs to do in international aspect such as translating more Latin American papers and expanding international connections which depend on the budget that we may receive for the next Persian year.

At the end I may thank all my hardworking colleagues and wish them a happy new year with more success, knowledge and happiness beside us.

Mohammad Karimi
Editor