Resources
The Institute for Oral History offers a number of free resources to support beginner and advanced oral history practitioners. The guides and resources offered below will help you as you plan a new project, edit your interviews, or explore how to conduct remote interviews.
Oral History Resources
Chapter 3 from Thomas L. Charlton's classic text, Oral History for Texans, provides practical instruction in oral history interviewing. Viewing the recorder as "an invited guest," Charlton advises readers on how to formulate open-ended questions to achieve rapport with narrators and how to then use both verbal and nonverbal probing techniques to further enhance significant recollection of the past.
Read "The Heart of Oral History: How to Interview" (PDF)
Charlton points the way to effective interviewing with the following techniques:
- Open questions
- Closed questions
- Probes
- Funnel-shaped sequence
- Inverted funnel-shaped sequence
This chapter also presents twenty-five proven strategies for oral history interviewing, with particular emphasis on local history projects. Charlton concludes, "When a prepared local historian shows keen interest in the information recounted in an interview and appreciation for the respondent's efforts, very positive results are possible. Interviewer praise for the respondent reinforces the permissive, receptive atmosphere so necessary to objective oral history at the local level" (p. 32).
The Institute for Oral History's updated oral history manual
For the entire introductory workshop manual, click the link below. You may print the manual for educational purposes.
Introduction to Oral History (full PDF)
To view specific topics related to oral history, click on the page titles below.
- Discovering oral history: What is it?
- Understanding oral history: Why do it?
- Planning a project: Where to begin?
- Establishing ethical relationships
- Preparing legal documents
- Choosing digital recorders
- Using Digital Media
- Focusing & researching a topic
- Selecting narrators
- Creating an interview outline
- Composing questions
- Making contact & setting up
- Getting the story
- Protecting & preserving recordings
- Time coding & indexing oral histories
- Transcribing oral histories
- Critiquing & citing oral histories
- Reaching the public with oral history outcomes
- Learning more: Resources
Chapter 4 from Thomas L. Charlton's classic text Oral History for Texans, instructs community organizations and individuals doing community history in planning and executing a successful oral history project.
Read "Organizing Oral History Projects" (PDF)
Charlton presents the following important considerations for planning and organizing your community oral history project:
- Identifying and setting goals
- Selection of oral history subjects
- Elites and nonelites
- Interview structure: life-review model
- Interview structure: subject-oriented model
- Processing oral history: to transcribe or not to transcribe?
- A few legal considerations
- Ethical considerations
- Preserving oral history
Oral History at a Distance: Conducting Remote Interviews
Sponsored by Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History and the Oral History Association
This timely webinar addressed the dynamics of conducting remote oral history interviews. It begins with an analysis of the pros and cons of conducting distance oral history interviews. Stephen Sloan then addresses aspects of interviewing in a distance environment, breaking down the interviewer and narrator experience in these exchanges, and offers direction on best approaches for interviewing at a distance. In recording remote interviews, Steven Sielaff covers best practices for recording archival-quality oral history interviews, then discusses in depth the tools and techniques available to enable the user to follow best practices in a remote setting. Physical equipment and software used for landline, cellular, and web-based video conferencing recording solutions are discussed. Adrienne Cain Darough covers the legal and ethical considerations and implications of oral histories conducted via distance interviewing. The information included in this section abides by OHA’s Principles and Best Practices, John Neuenschwander’s Oral History and the Law, as well as other resources applicable to distance interviewing.
Webinar Resources
- Webinar Slideshow
- Webinar Summary
- Webinar Chat Supplemental
- Telephone vs. In-Person Sample
Full Webinar Video
Webinar Q&A Video
We welcome both novice and experienced transcribers to adapt our transcribing and editing style guide to their needs. Since 1970, editors at the Institute for Oral History have developed these guidelines for transcribing oral history interview recordings. No transcript captures the whole essence of a recorded exchange between interviewer and interviewee. We encourage serious researchers to listen to the audio recordings to experience a closer approximation of what transpired in the interview.
Nevertheless, the transcript provides a useful format to access information of historical interest covered in an interview. Various editors, including the interviewee and interviewer, may manipulate transcripts before they are made available to researchers in an archives or library. Accuracy in creating the first draft transcript is therefore very important to the final edited outcome.
The style guide provides rules for spelling and punctuation useful in converting speech to written language and deals with elements common to the interview setting, including false starts, breaks in thought, interruptions, nonverbal sounds, and unintelligible speech.
Read the Baylor University Institute for Oral History’s Transcription Style Guide (PDF)