The Oral History Manual

Guides readers through the process of doing oral history.

The Oral History Manualis designed to help anyone interested in doing oral history research to think like an oral historian. Recognizing that oral history is a research methodology, the authors define oral history and then discuss the methodology in the context of the oral history life cycle – the guiding steps that take a practitioner from idea through access/use. They examine how to articulate the purpose of an interview, determine legal and ethical parameters, identify narrators and interviewers, choose equipment, develop budgets and record-keeping systems, prepare for and record interviews, care for interview materials, and use the interview information. In this third edition, in addition to new information on methodology, memory, technology, and legal options incorporated into each chapter, a completely new chapter provides guidelines on how to analyze interview content for effective use of oral history interview information. The Oral History Manualprovides an updated and expanded road map and a solid introduction to oral history for all oral history practitioners, from students to community and public historians.

In the past sixty years, oral history has moved from the periphery to the mainstream of academic studies and is now employed as a research tool by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, medical therapists, documentary film makers, and educators at all levels. The Oxford Handbook of Oral History brings together forty authors on five continents to address the evolution of oral history, the impact of digital technology, the most recent methodological and archival issues, and the application of oral history to both scholarly research and public presentations. The volume is addressed to seasoned practitioners as well as to newcomers, offering diverse perspectives on the current state of the field and its likely future developments. Some of its chapters survey large areas of oral history research and examine how they developed; others offer case studies that deal with specific projects, issues, and applications of oral history. From the Holocaust, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, the Falklands War in Argentina, the Velvet Revolution in Eastern Europe, to memories of September 11, 2001 and of Hurricane Katrina, the creative and essential efforts of oral historians worldwide are examined and explained in this multipurpose handbook.

With extensive examples from both historical and social science literature, this book is a practical guide to methods of recording oral history. The author provides suggestions on a range of techniques from developing a written interview guide and using tape recorders to asking probing questions during in-depth interviews and editing transcriptions. She also covers the ethical and legal issues involved in conducting life-history interviews and elaborates on three different types of oral history projects: community studies, biographies and family histories.

In recent decades, oral history has matured into an established field of critical importance to historians and social scientists alike. Handbook of Oral History captures the current state-of-the-art, identifies major strands of intellectual development, and predicts key directions for future growth in theory, research, and application.

"The recent development of digital audio and video recording technology has continued to alter the practice of oral history, making it even easier to produce and disseminate quality recordings. At the same time, digital technology has complicated the preservation of the recordings, past and present. This basic manual offers ... advice for setting up an oral history project, conducting interviews and using oral history for research, making video recordings, preserving oral history collections in archives and libraries, and teaching and presenting oral history"--

A manual addressed to students rather than to teachers or researchers, Oral History: An Introduction for Students is unique among the "how to" books in the field, adapting some of the best methods of group oral history projects to the needs of individual students. Useful in courses devoted entirely to oral history, the book also addresses the wider audience of students who may choose to do oral research in the context of otherwise traditional courses. The emphasis is on humanistic, imagininative, and intellectual challenge for students in integrating oral accounts with written documents. Only by achieving such flexibility, argues the author, can oral history fully realize its potential as a learning and teaching technique. A signficant contribution to theory and methodology as well as an introductory manual, this book will be of interest to professional oral history researchers and those individual scholars interested in adding oral history to their research techniques. James Hoopes has explored the writings of sociology and communications specialists in order to present a richly detailed and helpful analysis of the interview situation from a transactional point of view. Of particular interest is the section of the book devoted to the ways in which oral history can be related to other areas of research such as biography and family history and to the broader fields of cultural and social history. Hoopes' s central theme is that oral history, whether viewed primarily as a learning or research technique, can fulfill its promise as an important and humanistic resource only if it becomes part of general historical study wherever it is applicable.