Clifford M. Kuhn became the Oral History Association's first full-time executive director on January 1, at a time when the discipline of oral history is burgeoning because of digital advances, but also when it faces ethical and legal challenges.

Mr. Kuhn, who is 60, is an associate professor of history at Georgia State University. He will continue to teach part time while leading the group, which since 1966 has supported the gathering and preservation of historical information via recorded interviews.

A longtime oral historian, Mr. Kuhn has relied extensively on interviews for books, articles, and radio series about Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr., and Southern history and life. Using interviews and archival materials, he is working on a history of the life of Arthur F. Raper, a sociologist who studied sharecropper exploitation in the South in the mid-20th century....