"'Tell Me Your Life Story and Sign This Form': Methods and Ethics of Oral History Collection"

by Ailecia Ruscin and Sherrie Tucker

The Hall Center for the Humanities Oral History Workshop March 12, 2004

Ideas for Organizing an Oral History Project

1. Pick a Topic and Develop a Work Plan
   • work plans can include the following: compile a board of advisors, select interviewers, decide how much research to do, find transcribers, decide the number of interviewees you will need to interview to get enough information for the project, decide how long the interviews will need to be, finding funding, establish a timeline for yourself, do paperwork necessary for permissions (recent decisions have been made that exclude oral history from getting permission from Internal Review Boards—there is information available at the Oral History Association website: http://omega.dickinson.edu/organizations/oha/org_irb.html).The Oral History Association still advocates securing informed consent prior to the interview, and a signed legal release at the conclusion of the interview. Design a form that protects you and your interviewees by making sure you both understand the agreement you are making by embarking on the interview. An oral history is a historical document. The person you interview should be aware of how it will be used, who will have access to it, and whether it will be placed in an archive or library, and whether they have the right to withdraw it or change it at any time.
2. Keep a Project Journal
   • This is a good way to keep track of everything that goes on with the project. Take notes about pre- interviews, take notes after interviews, etc.
3. Research
   • know everything you need to know about the topic and time period
   • when interviewing an “important” person from a movement or a famous person, some interviewers find it best to appear knowledgeable to gain the trust of the interviewee, but there is no need to present yourself as an equivalent—let them teach you things in the interview
   • when working with a “regular” person, some interviewers find it best to appear not too knowledgeable so that interviewees will feel like their perspective is important and valid even if it goes against the grain of what is already known about that particular historical moment
   • do the literature search (books, newspapers, archival records)
   • background interviews with collaborators, friends, etc. might be important for some interviews
   • some interviewers suggest putting together an advisory board of people that they can rely on to bounce ideas off of and other suggest an advisory board of people who are knowledgeable about the subject or have been a part of the movement so that you can use them to help you find other interviewees
4. Find Interviewees
   • The first step is to find the first person to interview. This person will hopefully be someone who can give you the names and contact information for other people to interview.
5. Pre-Interview
   • Contact the person
   • Tell them about the project
   • Discuss the purpose of the interview
   • Discuss the use of a transcript (some people let interviewees see the transcript and edit it and others don’t, establish the way in which it will be done beforehand)
   • Discuss the release form.
   • Decide if you are going to have a pre-written questionnaire for your interview, if so, decide if you want to give this list of question to the person beforehand or not. If you decide to send them the questionnaire, use the pre-interview to ask them if they have any questions about it. (Some interviewers like to use consistent questionnaires, while others decide to leave it malleable. Some think that sticking to a questionnaire limits the story to only what you know about a topic.)
   • Schedule interview
   • Sometimes interviewees will go ahead and start telling their story before the tape has been turned on, be warned, you might need to learn how to cut people off and ask them to save it for the interview.
   • Some people ask for names of friends and family to do background interviews first so that you can reference these in your interview.
   • Call the night before to confirm
6. The Interview
   • Make sure that you have all the equipment you need. Bring extras of everything you have access to (especially tapes & batteries!) (Tape Recorder, Microphone, Extension Cord, Batteries, Tapes, Camera [to take pictures of documents or photographs they may show you])
   • Inform your interviewee once again about how the interview will be used, and secure their informed consent before beginning. Remind the interviewee that they do not have to talk about anything they don’t want to, that it is okay to turn off the recording device at any time, make sure you have a clear understanding about the potential uses of the tape, and an agreement regarding how the interviewee will be identified in citations of the interview.
   • Some interviewers begin the interview by going over with the person how you will be constructing the interview—this helps level out the playing field and helps people to feel more comfortable.
   • Some interviewers get the background of each interviewee, especially if the story is focused only on one time period or one movement. You can start off chronologically, starting with family background, grandparents, parents, (this helps them to relax and takes about 5-30 min.), family history, childhood, education, work history, community. These things can help later on when interpreting their stories for your work.
   • Bring key documents or photographs to help jar memories
   • Time period questions: What movies were you going to see? What clothes were people wearing? Mass culture experiences help you get to other information.
   • Ask one question at a time. If you ask more than one, they usually will only answer one of them.
   • If someone is stuck on a question about a person, ask them what they look like, this will help them remember stories.
   • Allow Silences. Important information might follow a silence.
   • Allow Time Off: take breaks to regroup or to gain composure
   • Find ways to challenge their story, sometimes you need to announce, “I’m going to interrupt you”
   • When asking “big questions” about race or other difficult issues: break it up to get at the question from various ways. Save these “big questions” for the end after rapport has been established.
   • Make references to background interviews because the interviewee already knows about them and it helps create a culture of collaboration
   • You and the interviewee should sign the release.
7. Follow-Up
   • Where do we leave people after they’ve talked to us about their experiences. Don’t rush out the door, help them find closure.
   • Be respectful and follow-up
   • Bring a transcript back to them if you promised it
   • Give people a copy of their tape or video to share with their family and friends
8. How to Use the Interview
   • There are many things to think about when doing oral history. Some people want to record stories and present them in a full form to the public. Some people transcribe interviews and turn them into narratives that appear to the reader to be written directly from the words of the interviewee, but have been rearranged from multiple interviews and re-assembled to sound readable. Others prefer to use direct quotes from interviewees.
   • Some people print only the interviews and do the analysis later or not at all, while others do analysis of interviews within the text. Decide whether or not to use short quotes from interviews or long passages. Do you include your questions in the text? Think about all of these ethical issues of the power relationship between the interviewee and the interviewer.
9. Equipment
   • Mini Disk recorder vs. Tape recorder: Mini Disk recorders digitally record the interview. They provide good sound and a digital format which is helpful when making a museum exhibit or website. But mini disk recorders cost more money and require more knowledge of computers. You will need a computer program called Stop/Start to transcribe the tape. Tape recorder are okay. One of the most important things to do when using a tape recorder is to use a plug-in microphone instead of the internal microphone which is usually going to provide a low-quality sound. When looking to buy a tape recorder, try to find one that has both a place to plug in an external microphone and a place to plug in headphones. If you use headphones during the interview you can hear the quality of the recording and no how to better adjust the microphone or placement of the cord to decrease external noise.
   • Try to buy a nicer microphone. Ones that can be attached to the lapel of the interviewee are good for interviews
10. Bibliography
    • The Regional Oral History Association Office at Berkeley has a great online bibliography for oral history: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/bib.html
    • Frisch, Michael H., A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990). Includes a chapter on how to prepare a manuscript from oral history interviews. In it Frisch recounts the process, which is usually invisible to the reader.
    • Gluck, Sherna and Daphne Patai, ed. Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York: Routledge, 1991). A collection of 13 essays on interviewing technique, interpretation, and advocacy issues by two generations of feminist oral historians.
    • Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson, editors, The Oral History Reader (New York: Routledge, 1998). A collection of essays exemplifying many approaches to conducting and working with oral histories.
    • Ritchie, Donald A., Doing Oral History. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995). Practical advice on oral history--planning, conducting, videotaping, preserving, teaching, presenting, and using in research and writing.

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