ORAL HISTORY WORKSHOP FOR TEACHERS

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IV. AFTER THE INTERVIEW

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AFTER THE INTERVIEW

Ensure long-term preservation of recordings by entrusting them to a local library or archives, where other researchers can access them as primary resources for years to come.

Preserve the recordings.

o Label them carefully.

o Duplicate originals and store them

safely.

o Use the copies for further

processing.

o Keep a file for permission forms,

interview notes, photographs,

research notes, etc.

Why preserve student recordings?o The student’s interview may be the only preserved

recording with a particular interviewee on a particular

topic of interest to historians now or in the future.

o Teachers may use the recordings with later classes to

provide a primary source for student learning on a

selected curriculum topic.

o To motivate students to obtain high-quality recordings

and interviews.

o To allow students to do the complete oral history

process, just like career oral historians.

o To provide students the satisfaction of creating

lasting historical documents.

o To honor the interviewees who share their stories with

students.

o To give the larger community as well as future scholars

access to the stories gathered and lessons learned from

the student’s oral history interview.

Will you transcribe?

Transcribing is time-consuming.

Transcribing distorts what actually went on

in the interview.

Oral history is a sound recording. Shouldn’t

it be heard rather than read?

– Yes Students practice language skills.

Narrators can review and correct.

Transcripts can be indexed.

Reading the transcript takes less time than

listening to the audio.

– No

AFTER THE INTERVIEW

If you transcribe ...

o adopt a style manual. Most historians use

Turabian or the Chicago Manual of Style.

o adopt a dictionary.

o download the transcribing style guide

furnished online by the Baylor University

Institute for Oral History.

Style Guide

If you transcribe ...

o Be accurate. Resist the urge to correct

and tidy grammar and word choice.

o Have another person listen to the

recording while checking/correcting the

first transcription.

o Send transcripts to the interviewees for

editing. Make changes they request.

o Deposit the transcripts with the

recordings in the library or archives for

preservation.

Create a time-subject log.

AFTER THE INTERVIEW

Indexing the recording by time and subject makes information on recordings more accessible and allows the researcher to provide correct spellings of names and terms used in the interview for future users or transcribers.

o Index soon after the interview.

o For tapes, use a stopwatch rather than the

counter on the recorder for greater accuracy.

o Digital playback software usually provides a

time log.

o Index by obvious breaks in the topic or by time

(every five minutes or less).

o The more details in the index, the more useful

it will be.

Sample of a time-subject log:

Name: Arthur Louis Santos

Date of interview: January 15, 2008

Location: Santos home, 2222 West Drive, Waco, Texas

Interviewer: John Sutcliffe

Project: Waco History Coalition: Sandtown

Recording no. 0778; compact disc

H/M/S Topic

00:00:03 Introduction

00:01:05 Description: between Brazos River and South 1st, below Clay St.

to city dump; shotgun houses mixed with frame structures;

railroad tracks; meat packing plants; unpaved streets

00:08:08 Name origin: not sure; speculates it is from sandy, unpaved

streets

00:09:25 Came when he was a baby (born in 1930); family moved from

Coahuila, Mexico, because several uncles lived here;

names of family members: father, Juan Reyes Santos; mother:

María Zapata Lopez Santos; uncles, Julio and Ernesto Lopez

00:15:33 Childhood games, fishing and swimming in river, walking past

city square to attend Sunday mass at St. Francis Catholic

Church

Analyze the content by asking

o What are the most important points made in this interview?

o What patterns, key phrases, themes emerge from the stories

told?

o How does the interviewee express his/her feelings about

the topic?

o What do these stories teach me about the topic?

o How are the interviewee’s stories like/unlike written

versions of the topic? Why?

o What does this interview tell me that the written sources

left out?

o What other questions might this interviewee be able to

answer about the topic?

o Based on what this interview uncovers, what additional

research do I need to do to learn more about the topic or

verify these stories?

AFTER THE INTERVIEW

Evaluate the quality.

THE RECORDING

Is the technical quality of this recording good?

audio clear? volume strong? Is there background

noise? internal machine noise?

THE TECHNIQUE

Did I ask open-ended questions? good follow up

questions? Did I interrupt? Did I listen well?

ASK YOURSELF

What did I learn about doing interviews from

this experience?

What should I do differently next time?

AFTER THE INTERVIEW

Write and publish

stories

poems

plays

monologues

readers theater

AFTER THE INTERVIEW

essays

Share the outcome.

Create

maps

cartoons

posters

brochures

media shows

Web sites

history fair projects

art

music

dance

AFTER THE INTERVIEW

Share the outcome.

o Collect artifacts, incorporate stories from the

oral histories, and hold an exhibition.

o Lead tours of the neighborhood and tell stories

from the oral histories.

o Teach peers or younger students what you have

learned.

o Host a gathering for the interviewees and display

the students’ work. For example, view photos of

students and their interviewees and project

displays at the annual St. Andrews Episcopal

School “Oral History Night.”

Make it an event.

AFTER THE INTERVIEW

Share the outcome.

See, for example, student assessments of what they learned about the Great Depression from an oral history project in Richfield, Utah, at Sevier County Oral History Project.

Encourage self-assessment through

student portfolios.

AFTER THE INTERVIEW

Assess student learning.

o What did I set out to learn?

o What did I learn?

o What did I learn about myself as a

learner?

o What are my strengths and weaknesses as

a learner?

o What do I still want to learn?

o How do I plan to go about learning more?

o How do I plan to continue assessing my

learning?

Self-assessment questions

Assigning grades

Assignment Points possible

Interview completed 20

on time 5

quality 5

Transcript completed 20

on time 5

quality 5

Final project completed 20

on time 5

quality 5

Student conduct 10

Total points 100

For grading purposes, some teachers use the following point system:

ORAL HISTORY WORKSHOP FOR TEACHERS

You have completed AFTER THE INTERVIEW and you

have seen how students can evaluate and use their

oral histories in creative ways.

Now return to the

Workshop for Teachers

and test your knowledge of oral history with the

Teacher’s Quiz.

Visit the Workshop for Students.