Melvyn C. Goldstein, an anthropologist at Case Western Reserve University, has spent 40 years, off and on, collecting oral histories from Tibet. As rural Tibetans who have endured decades of tumult approach old age, Goldstein, who is also a director of the university's Center for Research on Tibet, has preserved their stories. He has interviewed more than 700 Tibetans for the Tibet Oral History and Archive Project, which includes 30,000 pages of transcripts and more than 2,000 hours of audiotape. Next year the fruits of his labor will move from Case Western to the Tibetan collection in the Library of Congress's Asian Division, to which Goldstein, 70, has donated the material. He made the gift in part because, he says, the Library of Congress has the resources to preserve the archive as technology progresses. Still, a great deal of work remains to be done before the transfer. The tapes must be digitally reformatted to be playable on the library's system and available online. English translations will accompany each interview, along with links that explain unfamiliar phrases and other potentially confusing elements of Tibetan language.