Oracle Database Discussions

I am on the Oracle DB Enterprise version 11.2.0.2.0. I have some large tables and was trying to get some info on table partitioning historical data.
My tables have a column called 'YearID' which I think would be a good column to seperate by. Maybe the 'range partitioning' option? A couple questions:

1) What type of partitionig would you suggest and why?
2) Can this be automated so at the beginning of each new year (new YearID value) it uses a different partitiion. I am concerned that partitioning would require alot of DBA intervention and need to make sure this can be set-up once.

thanks for any info.