Practical Advice:
Getting Started
What is Oral History?
History is all around us, in our own families and communities, in the living memories and the experiences of older people. We have only
to ask them and they can tell us enough stories to fill a library of books. This kind of history - that we all gather as we go through
life - is called ORAL HISTORY
Everyone has a story to tell about their life which is unique to them. Some people have been involved in momentous historical events like the Second World War, but many others haven't. Regardless of age or importance we all have interesting experiences to share.
Most importantly, historical documents and books can't tell us everything about our past. Often they concentrate on famous people and big events, and tend to miss out ordinary people talking about everyday events. They also neglect people on the margins of society - ethnic communities, disabled and unemployed people for example - whose voices have been hidden from history. Oral history fills in the gaps and gives us history which includes everyone. Unfortunately, because memories die when people do, if we don't record peoples’ life histories they are lost forever.
What Can People Remember?
Everyone forgets things as time goes by and we all remember things in different ways. Some people's memories are better than others and
for reasons we don't really understand, many people actually remember their early years more as they get older. This is helpful when we
want to record peoples’ memories. All memories are a mixture of facts and opinions, and both are important. The way in which people make
sense of their lives is valuable historical evidence in itself. Few of us are good at remembering dates, and we tend to telescope two
similar events into a single memory. So when we interview people it is important to get them to tell us about direct personal experiences
- eye-witness testimony - rather than things that might have been heard second hand.
Where to Start?
If you haven't done any oral history interviewing before, think first about a focus or theme for your project. This could be your own
family or street or block of flats, or it could be where you work, or your school. You might want to pick a topic to ask people about, for
example memories of childhood, leisure, politics, religion or women's experience in wartime or memories of coming to Britain as a migrant.
Whether you decide to work alone or as part of a group, having a theme will help you to decide who to interview.
Finding someone to interview
- Ask friends, relatives, neighbours, work colleagues
- Contact local history groups, Women's Institutes, Rotary Clubs, trade unions, schools, professional or voluntary organisations
- Visit older people's centres and clubs
- Ask you local newspaper or radio station to run an appeal
- Put a notice up in your local library or museum
Planning
Before interviewing someone it's useful to have done some background research. Have a look at any books, maps or old newspapers that might be relevant in your local library or record office or on the web. Prepare a list of questions but be careful that this does not make you too rigid in your questioning approach. Use it as a memory jogger.
Some of the best things you find out will be unexpected, and once you get started you are likely to be told some things you had not previously thought about. So it is essential to give the person you are recording plenty of time to tell you what they think matters. But you should not let the interview drift: it is your job to guide it. For this you need an overall plan. Group the topics you want to cover in a logical way. Often a chronological structure is best.
Preparing questions
Work out how to ask the essential questions.
Use plain words and avoid suggesting the answers. Rather than,
"I suppose you must have had a poor and unhappy childhood?", ask
"Can you describe your childhood?"
You will need some questions that encourage precise answers:
"Where did you move to next?"
But you also need others which are open, inviting descriptions, comments, opinions:
"How did you feel about that?"
"What sort of person was she?"
"Can you describe the house you lived in?"
"Why did you decide to change jobs?"
There are some points to cover in every interview: date and place of birth, what their parents' and their own main jobs were. And whatever the topic, it usually helps to get the interviewee talking if you begin with their earlier life: family background, grandparents, parents and brothers and sisters (including topics such as discipline), then onto childhood home (housework, chores, mealtimes), leisure (street games, gangs, sport, clubs, books, weekends, holidays, festivals), politics and religion, schooling (key teachers, friends, favourite subjects), early relationships, working life (first job, a typical working day, promotion, pranks and initiation, trade unions and professional organisations), and finally later family life (marriage, divorce, children, homes, money, neighbours, social life, hopes).
Most people find it easier to remember their life in chronological order, and it can sometimes take you two or three sessions to record a full life story.
The best interviews flow naturally and are not rehearsed. Don't over-prepare. Don't use a script. Tape recorded life stories should be lively, spontaneous and vivid. Allow people to be themselves.
Recording Equipment
Because you can't write down everything that someone tells you it is a good idea to use an audio or video recorder.
Your recordings will be unique historical "documents" which other people need to be able to hear and understand easily, so it's worth getting a good quality recording. If you can't afford to buy any equipment you might be able to borrow some, maybe from another oral history group.
Audio recorders
There are many different makes of portable audio recorders. Choosing the right recorder depends very much on your budget and what you plan to do with the recordings subsequently. Bear in mind that audio formats and professional advice are in constant flux so it is vital to seek up-to-the-minute advice (for example from the British Library’s oral history department: oralhistory@bl.uk).
In recent years ‘solid state’ digital recorders have replaced the analogue recorders (such as audio cassettes) and older digital formats (like minidisc) that many oral historians used. Called ‘solid state’ because they have no moving parts and record audio directly to a memory card or built-in hard-drive memory, there is a bewildering range of makes, models and formats available. Some recorders use ‘proprietary’ or compressed digital formats which are not internationally-recognised and may not be future-proof: these should be avoided, especially as some will record poor quality audio. Compressed files (such as MP3) can also audibly degrade when they are converted to another format. Further guides can be found at the links below:
- Vermont Folklife Center, Digital Audio Recording Equipment Guide
- USA Oral History Association, Digital Audio Recorders
- Be able to record in stereo using two external microphones (preferably with professional XLR sockets)
- Be able to record uncompressed PCM WAV (or .wav) files at 44.1kHz 16 bit and/or 48kHz 16bit. This is a good standard of recording quality using a widely-recognised format. 3 hours of stereo audio at 48kHz/16bit roughly equates to 2GB of storage space on a memory card (different recorders use different types of card).
- Have a USB2 connection to allow the recorded files to be uploaded easily to a computer for renaming, security copying and long-term storage.
- Be capable of being powered by both rechargeable batteries and mains supply.
As these recorders create digital files rather than physical objects that sit on shelves, it is vital that all your computer systems are capable of dealing with large audio files, and are secure and backed up. Careful thought needs to be given to naming the audio files with unique numbers so they can be easily located later. Expert advice about backing-up digital files has changed in recent years and multiple computer external hard disc drives are now favoured over CD-Rs and DVD-Rs for long-term storage (see below).
Microphones
Whatever recorder you decide to use it is important to use an external microphone. Internal microphones built into the recorder often
give poor results. For one-to-one interviews indoors, the best external microphone is a small tie clip or lapel microphone. If your
recorder is stereo and has two microphone sockets you can get two microphones - one of for your interviewee and one for yourself. They can
be attached discreetly to your clothing and give excellent results. For interviews outdoors a uni-directional (or cardioid) hand-held
microphone is best as it will pick up less unwanted noise. There are also special microphones designed to record groups of people sitting
around a table.
Video
Many oral historians favour audio for its ease-of-use, portability, and intimacy; but video equipment has fallen in price and size in recent years and is becoming a more affordable option. Video has its benefits (for example apart from the interview itself, photographs can also be filmed for later use), but done badly it is perhaps best not done at all. And oral historians have mixed views about the impact of a video camera on the intimacy of the interview relationship.
Many projects now use miniDV video format, which is a digital medium. Copying to other formats could result in a loss of data, so one option archivally would be to copy from miniDV to a second miniDV tape, simply for the security of having more than one copy. You can copy to a higher grade tape format, DigiBeta being a standard, but the costs then become very high. Ideally, you might want to have the recordings copied as uncompressed avi files onto a hard drive. Further migration to MPEG-4 or JPEG2000 (an emerging standard) would be considered best for preservation.
These two websites offer online training packages about using video for interviews:
http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/guides/index.html
http://www.bbctraining.com/
For advice on filming try:
http://www.simplydv.co.uk/info-base/index_infobase.html
The British Library has published some general guidelines on video preservation which is online at http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/endangeredarch/rgdownload.html.
Approaching people
The best way to approach someone you want to interview is by personal contact, rather than by letter, and often the initial contact will be by telephone. This gives you an opportunity to introduce yourself, explain your project and outline the sort of topics you might cover in your conversation. The person you have approached may be uncertain: they might say they have nothing interesting to say. So you sometimes have to do a bit of persuading. The key is to talk in terms of "a chat about the past" or a "story of your life" rather than an "interview" which can sound forbidding!
When you speak to them get some background information and decide where the interview should take the place. The person's own home is by far the best as they will be much more relaxed. A one-to-one interview is best. Privacy encourages an atmosphere of trust and honesty. A third person present, even a close partner, can inhibit and influence free discussion.
Doing the interview
Be reassuring:
Remember that you are their guest, and if they are elderly, that you may be the first person they have spoken to for several days. They
will be as nervous and apprehensive as you are, so it is essential to be cordial and patient.
Choose a quiet place:
Try to pick a room which is not on a busy road. If you can, switch off radios and televisions, which can sometimes make it difficult to
hear what someone is saying. Switch off all mobile phones.
Get close:
Sit side-by-side and if you are using a clip-on microphone, put it about nine inches from the person's mouth. With a hand-held microphone
place it as near as possible but not on the same surface as the recorder, nor on a hard surface which gives poor sound quality. Generally,
the closer the microphone the better the results.
- Don't interrupt: Don't ask too many questions. Your aim is to get them to talk, not to talk to yourself. Always wait for a pause before you ask the next question. Listen carefully and maintain good eye contact.
- Respond positively: body language like nodding and smiling is much better than "ers" and "ums" and "reallys".
- Be relaxed, unhurried and sympathetic.
- Don't contradict and don't get into heated debate.
- Don't be afraid to ask more questions, but don't jump from one subject to another too abruptly. As well as a mere descriptive retelling of events, try to explore motives and feelings with questions like "Why?" and "How did you feel?".
Getting behind stereotype and generalisation is one of the most challenging aspects of interviewing people. But remember to be sensitive and always respect confidences.
After the interview
After the interview is finished don't rush away. Take time to thank them and talk about yourself. It is also the time to discuss the copyright and clearance form (more details in the Copyright and Ethics section of this website). You will often be shown some interesting old photographs or documents. Before you leave provide an address or phone number where you can be contacted and make clear whether you will be returning for a follow up interview or not. This can avert any unnecessary worry. Remember that your visit will often have a major impact on someone who has perhaps never told anyone their memories before.
Back at base it is vital to transfer the digital files you have recorded to computer and make back-up safety copies for permanent preservation. Digital files can be uploaded to computer via the USB port in the recorder or (better) via a card reader plugged into USB2 port on the PC. A good routine is to upload, rename, and back up to external computer hard-drive, then make an additional copy as an MP3 for playback, transcription and security purposes. It’s also possible at this stage to make a further copy (say for an interviewee or transcriber) onto a DVD or CDR, though neither should be regarded as an archival version. Then (and only then) it's possible to ‘reformat’ (i.e. wipe) the memory card ready for the next recording.
Here are some pointers on hard disc drives, now favoured for long-term preservation:- Hard disc drives are manufactured to last only a few years. In practice, they might last longer, but the notion of a single individual drive as a reliable long-term store is a non-starter.
- However, drives can successfully be used for long-term storage by replicating data across more than one drive.
- The particular drive model is less important than the strategy of using different brands of drive in order to diminish the risk of simultaneous drive failures.
- The simplest system is to manually mirror (replicate) data across at least one other drive, and store the replica(s) in different locations.
- As well as establishing a regular (daily) back-up routine it is worth using a system that regularly checks each disc for integrity, sector errors etc, as well as verifying that data copying is accurate. RAID systems are becoming cheaper and can be used to replicate and check data across several disc drives, and automate the process of restoring data automatically when a particular drive fails (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID).
- Some systems use RAIDs coupled with off-line backup on optical disc or on tape drives (LTO etc) as extra security. The BL uses this kind of mass storage system (known in the BL as the ‘Digital Library System’) but multiple external hard-drives are likely to be a more viable and affordable option for most projects.
Each new interviewee should have their own personal file containing details of his or her full name and date of birth, the place and date of the interview, your own name, the type of equipment you used etc., together with the copyright form and copies of any letters. Full verbatim transcription of recordings is hugely time-consuming and expensive, but transcripts do provide an excellent guide to your recordings. There are now several computer software packages that make transcription easier: Express Scribe Transcription Playback software is a free download from http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/. This is controllable via ‘hot keys’ on the keyboard and/or via a remote foot pedal. Alternative software includes Start Stop, details at http://www.startstop.com/home.asp.
As a minimum it is essential to write a synopsis or summary of the interview which briefly lists in order all the main themes, topics and stories discussed. This will come in useful if you want to use the interview in an exhibition, or book, or radio programme. As well as establishing a good routine for downloading and backing-up digital files it is also important to think about archiving copies of your recordings with your local library or archive. Many project funders will expect you to have identified a permanent place of deposit for your recordings before the project starts.
Rob Perks
British Library
Updated June 2009