The Friends of the Cabildo, the support group for the Louisiana State Museum, has been conducting oral history interviews since 1972. FOC Board member Dorothy Schlesinger has been a major force behind the oral history program since its inception. In 1992 the FOC and the New Orleans Public Library agreed to a transfer of the duplicate user tapes from the Museum's Louisiana Historical Center to the Library's Louisiana Division. 567 tapes were transferred and numerous additions to the collection have been made since 1992. In 1997 Schlesinger and Dorothy Mahan, then Director of the Oral History Program, edited a new directory of the collection. Copies of that directory are available in the Louisiana Division under call number LOU R 016.9763 M214.

Professor Hubert Humphreys, in his 1980 Louisiana Oral History Collections: A Directory describes the FOC collection as follows,

This collection on the social, economic, cultural and political history of New Orleans and/or the lives of older New Orleanians has the uneveness one would expect of such a miscellaneous and diverse collection. It is rich in colorful detail from people that have one thing in common--New Orleans is their home. The collection is the result of the work of Mrs. Dorothy Schlesinger and a volunteer committee who did the interviewing and transcribing....

• Boggs, Mrs. Corinne "Lindy"
  Newcomb College--New Orleans Politics--Pointe Coupee Parish--French Quarter Preservation
• Dyer, Mr. & Mrs. Stuart
  First Presbyterian Church--Nativity Tableaux
• Hoskins, Mrs. Richard
  Family--James P. Freret--Metairie, 1900-
• Polack, Robert
  Autobiography--Law--Neighborhood (Old Metairie)--Judge John Minor Wisdom
• Samuel, J. Raymond
  Autobiography--Real Estate Development (New Orleans)
• Valley, Edward
  Autobiography--Neighborhood (French Quarter)

See a list of additions to the collection since publication of the 1997 directory.

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12/2/1997-we