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Valerie Raleigh Yow's book is a really great overview of oral histories, and possibly answers every question you might have about preparing for an interview, conducting the interview, what to do after the interview, and how to use the quotes and information you get.
Yow starts at the very beginning of the history of oral interviews and passing down information orally, which made it seem like the book was going to be dry and boring. (A good portion of each chapter is bibliography/other reading and notes/citations, which also made it seem like the book was going to be super long. This is a good-sized book, but when you take into account how much of it is reference material, it's much less daunting.) But then she gets into what we really came here for.
Yow starts at the beginning of the interviewing process: asking what the purpose of your project is, who you need to talk to, what you want to ask them about, and whether they can give you names of other people to talk about. (You thought the beginning of the interviewing process was when you showed up at the interviewee's house? Wrong!) She also discusses interviewing techniques and strategies, legal issues and ethics, fact-checking, and getting a range of voices for your project.
Other chapters include topics like how to choose a recorder, work-for-hire (ethics, warnings, scope of work), chapters for those specifically doing family histories or community (not necessarily geographic) histories, and where to store your final product (accessible archives!).
The upsides:
- Yow covers everything about an oral history project, from figuring out who to talk to, how to get additional people to talk to you, how to act around the interviewee, having an informal meeting with the interviewee to get to know each other before the real interview, cultural differences, ethics, having the interviewee read the transcript or your finished product, how to choose your audio recorder, transcribing, finding a repository, ... everything from your first "I have to do an interview" to your very final "It's done, has been used, and has been stored somewhere safe but accessible."
- The bibliography and suggested reading at the end of each chapter. Yow breaks them down by topic, and tells why each resource is a good resource.
- Sample forms, questionnaires, and instructions.
The downsides:
- Since Yow is writing for different audiences (the family historian, the public historian, the work-for-hire for a company project, etc.), she sometimes repeats information from other chapters. If you're reading the book straight through, you'll start to feel the repetition. But if you're only reading chapters that are relevant to your type of project, this is actually an upside: no matter why you're reading the book, you're going to get all the information you need.
Overall:
This is a great one-stop reference for all aspects of an oral history project. If you're spearheading an oral history project or the only one involved in one -- for a museum, community, school, or company -- I'd recommend reading this whole book; if you have others helping you, such as students or volunteers who will be less involved in the whole process, I'd recommend giving them portions to read, but not necessarily the whole thing. There's definitely something for everyone involved in an oral history/interviewing project!
Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Third Edition, 2015
Valerie Raleigh Yow
406 pages, including sample documents and recommended reading
