Gladys Wilkins Remembers Button Cutting from Lisa Wolfe on Vimeo.
Oral History captures the everyday memories of everyday people. You can turn these memories into an (extra) ordinary story.
Historians have finally recognized that the everyday memories of everyday people, not just the rich and famous, have historical importance.
Oral history is the (systematic) collection of living people’s testitmony about their own experiences. It’s up to you as a teller of travel tales to collect and preserve those memories, those stories. Otherwise, they will disappear forever.
You conduct an oral history by interviewing a person who lived through a historical event or time period. That person must be able to recall details and other memories.
If you want to learn about the Great Depression, for example, it would be great if you could find someone to interview who was at least in his or her early teens during the 1930s. This means the person would be about 80 years old today.
Recording an oral history is a great way to capture history as people actually live it.
As a traveler, you’ve learned that people are anxious to talk about themselves and tell stories about their surroundings and their histories. You can take their eagerness one step further by recording them. Just ask their permission first. I’ve found that most people are flattered and many go out of their way to thank you for giving them the opportunity to share.
Oral history is not folklore, gossip, hearsay, or rumor.
Oral historians attempt to verify their findings, analyze them, and place them in an accurate historical context.
Oral historians are also concerned with the storage of their findings for use by later scholars.
Oral History Interviews can be intimidating for newbies. Here are a few hints.
Have a few questions worked up ahead of time so that you can keep the interview flowing.
Ask open-ended questions like: “If you stood on the doorstep of the house you grew up in and looked inside, what would you see?”
Remember that many people get really tired after an hour of interviewing, so don’t let the interview go on for too long.
Here are a few more interviewing guidelines.
Study the questions you’ve prepared so that you’re not reading from the page.
Feel free to ad lib.
Make eye contact.
Allow the interviewee to complete their thoughts. “Dead air” is okay.
Don’t interrupt.
Let the respondent signal that he or she is finished with a question before you move on.
Use your intuition: is it telling you to probe further?
Feel free to request specifics or details that will clarify or expand upon a general response.
Use good judgment. Be sensitive about information that is painful or traumatic.
Assure privacy.
Make sure that everyone is comfortable and has water.
Think long and hard about how to want to present the information you’ve gathered in your interview. You might want to tell a travel tale that celebrates a sense of place, an event or a person, a hardship endured or a triumph achieved, how things used to be, how you’d like to see things in the future, or a tall tale or joke. It’s your choice.
I often choose to incorporate oral histories in the slideshows I create. An example is at the beginning of this post. The entire narrative is based on one woman’s oral history. Take a look and have a listen. Gladys Wilkins has a great story to tell!
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