Marin Escalera

Oral history is the recording and documentation of history through oral accounts such as interviews. In the more modern sense these interviews are done while being recorded simultaneously so the historian can not only have an audio record of it but also have an audio to use for a transcription.  Starting around the mid 20^th century oral history was tied closely to the rise of public history since both as Mary Larson stated shared “multiple points of commonality, including a frequent interest in documenting under- undocumented communities.” (p. 61) So as a result both histories work together in many points.

            In this past week I was able to visit the Oral History program and see how records are stored. During this visit I was also able to get an opportunity to practice interviewing skills with my peers.  Some things that were noted which make a good interviewer is to be prepared but not too hung up on following your list of questions. Since if you stay stuck on asking your premade questions then the interview will end up being very stiff. A way to have a natural flow in interviews is to have follow up questions based on what the interviewee responded. This all gives the interviewee a sense of comfort because it shows that the interviewer is actually listening and cares to know more. Also following this we discussed that it is important to have both closed ended questions and open ended questions.  It gives the interview more opportunity to expand and get answers that may have not been looked into if kept on a script. As for the interviewee it’s good to give long answers rather than short and closed answers. It’s hard for the interviewer to keep a natural flow if the interviewee only says “yes” or “no” to everything. When practicing with my peers they gave me these tips since they were more experienced doing interviews. They even pointed out in our mock interview what question was an open ended question and why. Then explained which one was a closed ended question and why. Though I was only the interviewee in this exercise I did learn a lot of things of how to be a good interviewer as well.

            Alongside this exercise I was also given the opportunity to practice my transcription editing skills. This was not my first time editing a transcription of an oral interview but it was my first time editing it completely to the official university standard. We were given a guideline which would instruct us about how the margins needed to be and how to write out different things in the transcription. There were more details that go into it than I had originally thought since the formatting is very specific. This is what took most of my time while transcribing. Overall it was good practice for transcription and I learned about how sentences which are not formal sentences are to be written.

            Oral histories are useful for the primary sources that they provide and since it involves primary witnesses it also ties in to the topic of public history. Since the interviewees are not always professional academics, they can be anyone since experiences are not only limited to academics.  Overall giving a shared authority between the public and academia. Allowing the bond between the two grow.

Mary Larson, “Shifting the Balance of Power: Oral History and Public History in the Digital Era” in Handbook of Digital Public History (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 2022)