The Presidential LIbraries, of course, have a major "oral history"  
project that collects material from a variety of economists (and  
others) involved in policy making at senior levels.

The Columbia University Oral History Research Office is another  
source. I believe Tiago Mata has written about other sources.

Personally, I've always been a bit taken aback by the willingness of  
historians of economic thought to use oral histories as a source for  
"factual" data. Oral histories are incredibly rich and enlightening,  
but the ways in which the past is re-interpreted (consciously or  
unconsciously) by the principles is much more interesting than what  
they think they remember about events that happened five decades ago.  
We could do much more with this technique than we have to date.

Evelyn Forget
---------------

At Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:03:08 +0100, Dr Robert Anthony Cord wrote:

> Dear all
>
> The British Library is currently engaged in a major project which will
> collect the oral histories of 200 eminent British scientists, previously a
> major gap in the effort to understand the development of British science.
> I can find no equivalent in economics, the closest arguably being Ross
> Emmett's Chicago Economics Oral History Project. Is there anything else
> out there and what are the views of the list on this method of research?
>
> All the best
>
> Bob
>
>