good afternoon everyone i'm maggie mayhem the assistant director for community engagement with the state historical society of missouri and i'm pleased to welcome you and share how much we enjoy being able to connect with audiences through our virtual programming thank you so much to everyone for joining us today for the oral history online workshop presented by the state historical society of missouri's oral historian dr sean ross who specializes in 20th century u.s missouri and african-american history and works to collect and share oral history interviews that represent missouri's culture and history today's program is made possible thanks to the incredible support of the state historical society of missouri's members and donors please visit our website at shsm dot o-r-g to see how you can add your support and secure the society's ability to carry out its work for a second century you can also see our full calendar of events on the website and we hope you can join us for upcoming programs as we get started today we welcome your questions for sean and have reserved time at the end of the presentation for q a at the bottom of your screen you'll see both q a and chat options for you to share your questions as we are using zoom webinar for the presentation we do not see or hear attendees on camera but we can see your questions and look forward to responding to them thanks again for joining us and now i'll turn it over to sean thanks sean thank you maggie and thank you everyone uh for joining us today we're going to go through some basic information on how to consider an oral history project and really how to go through the various stages of that project from really the idea that you're going to undertake such a such a project all the way through kind of the completed and archived form so that's our goal for today now first of all what is oral history well in many ways it provides a lot of historical context for various projects as well as providing key elements of genealogy as we think of it broadly in various cases of study first and foremost it is going to be a primary source you're involved in a project to interview someone who was an eyewitness or has first-hand knowledge about an event or a person or some sort of activity in a global history so you're really recording their stories as well as the kind of historical connections to larger we think of events or projects in history as we know it secondly it offers a chance to do genealogy whenever we do oral histories primarily in our research and projects we look at not only what the individual was connected with in their career military service or even family kind of legacy kind of up to the president but also the past as well we asked them about you know what their parents names were where they lived at what careers they might have had and we try to track that back as far as possible in time and this offers a great way to study genealogy and really provide a key resource not only to genealogists who want to research through an oral history but also for the individual and their families in and of themselves to keep those records for their own family trees and for genealogies um it also offers an opportunity to fill historical gaps while we may know about key elements of american history or even world history um through primary sources from secondary sources um documents maps things like that an oracle can provide that firsthand account like i said to really fill in this information to have someone who maybe was not so much actively involved in an event certainly can remember and tell about their own memories of it and certainly how they were impacted by it and possibly had some sort of larger um cultural legacy to it finally it offers a chance to cross cultural and economic boundaries oral histories can be basically directed towards any individual you can interview presidents you can interview governors world leaders um you know congress uh members of congress some members of the united states senate judges but you can at the same time look at an event at the grassroots level individuals or perhaps activists seeking political reform you know people who are trying to put food on the tables of missourians and americans through their activities on the farm uh people who trying to perhaps in bring about a global change but necessarily not so much on a large-scale basis so you can bring about a lot of elements of world history through these cultural and economic boundaries by seeking to do various projects engaged with oral history so it provides this primary source the most primary of primary source to an extent an element of genealogy an attempt to fill the historical gaps and then finally an element to cross cultural and economic boundaries so when you begin to look at a project and what you want to engage with you'd be asking yourself where do i begin and to really to begin you need to understand kind of what oral history is and how to perform um oral history interviews and undertake oral history projects so the first question might be how do i learn about oral history and for starters you're already off to a good start we'll say um one of the first and best ways to really engage with oral history is to attend workshops and webinars such as this to kind of get a basic background of information about the oral history project and really how to conduct and perform oral histories and things to consider going forward other organizations of note include the oral history association oha which handles not only a national from an american perspective organizational practice and study of oral history but also is engaged with international organizations to conduct oral history they also fund research projects connected with emerging crises as well as with various demographic and cultural specific projects finally another organization that i recommend to people is connected with baylor university and that's the institute for oral history based out of waco texas this institute for history not only includes instructors at the university level but also engages with a number of projects and granting uh grant opportunities to engage with the larger national international world history these two these two organizations also provide web links that include not only you know what you're going to learn today but also kind of what to think about for projects how to view oral histories and really how to think about projects going forward now the next step you'll be thinking about is what is my project what do i want to do in my oral history as i'm kind of thinking about the timeline uh the subject matter and the people to interview well you want to think about your locality you want to think about how broad you want to be is this going to be a regional study that examines perhaps northeast missouri we could think of maybe the st louis area perhaps even someplace along the lines of even a springfield or a cape girardeau do i want to look at a statewide basis such as missouri or neighboring states do i want to do a localized focus a specific town or specific county you know or do i have a specific theme and do i want to interview you know world war ii veterans from my specific county do i want to think about you know graduating high school seniors who you know the last half of their senior year of high school was cut off by covet 19 but i want to talk to you know medical workers do i want to talk to farmers dairy farmers perhaps you know you want to think about your project as either a specific theme but also kind of a localized regional or statewide or even nationwide theme as well for your project some examples for the state historical society of missouri we have specific themes we have a joplin tornado oral history project which is related to that 2011 tornado that went through joplin and talks people who were not only personally impacted by the tornado in terms of destruction of their homes or loss of life but also with people who came in and provided relief efforts people who were connected with the media people who were kind of in that moment and recording it for long-term um preservation at the same time we have things like you know one-room school houses which is a missouri entire uh entire stretch of missouri focus on people who attended or taught at one room school houses we have some on veterans we have some on uh prisoners of war these are kind of specific themes we have but also you can kind of see a localized focus with joplin but also a statewide focus with kind of one room schoolhouse and the veterans project next you should think about who are you going to interview you know who should i interview when i'm thinking about this project and that kind of connects back to the last step with kind of the theme or even the region but also you want to think about how long your interviews are going to be is this going to be a specific moment in time interview are you going to ask about a moment in time and thus you may only need you know 15 20 minutes per interview maybe a half hour or are you seeking to get a life story from someone you know from birth and even elements of their of their family history all the way up to the present if you're kind of looking for the life story element you need to think about time and duration and things like that as well as any people you want to interview and get multiple stories within one interview moment of time in history is going to be someone who's going to be perhaps younger someone like a like you mentioned senior in high school going through coven 19 versus a life story maybe someone who is a retiree someone who is perhaps you know in a point in their life where they have retired from their career and are now in um you know their 70s 80s even into their 90s in that way fourth you should think about what equipment you will use we live in a day and age of technology and technology can be a great thing um for example this um zoom webinar right here is actually can be recorded and when the recording is downloaded it saves a video and an audio file so right there you can conduct zoom interviews um in that manner through your computer you can also do it by phone um in the same way through something like zoom and we'll talk about that in a little bit you can use your cell phone and use apps like voice recorder and voice memo um and you can also use kind of the classic cassette tape recordings recording equipment you can use sd card recording equipment you can use various things to record interviews in this current great state of technology for the historical society we use the h5 zoom recorder which is more of a top of the line recorder that offers not only recordings on an sd card but also plugs into a computer it can edit on the actual device and it has built-in microphones that are very very sensitive um to sounds and kind of the sounds around you um so that's kind of the model we use but there's a number of things that you can use um in your own equipment going forward finally where will these require recordings be held at you want long-term preservation even at the start of a project you want to think about not only kind of how you're going to save this right you're doing this for a local museum are you doing this for a church group for a school you know what organization or are you possibly affiliated with and what are the means to record it and then preserve it long term uh you want to think about that because if you record it put it on your phone or even onto your computer and your computer or phone crashes you know the long-term preservation is lost in many ways of that recording so thinking about that at the start can be something to think about as well you know what archive president mode do you want to have going forward as you get into this next step of interviewing you want to think about kind of various um ideas various questions um various materials that you have um to prepare and get involved with the interview so begin by doing your research first and foremost why are you interviewing this person how do you reach out to them what do you want to know what do you need to know you know these are all important things to consider as you get into the interview so let's say you're doing a veterans project so why are you interviewing this person this first person could perhaps be a veteran of world war ii okay that answers that question how do you want to reach out to them this is an important question because most people don't think about this until the moment of we live in a day and age where you know we from time to time get phone calls on our cell phone or on our home phone um scammers um and it makes us almost uneasy to answer the phone sometimes because you're afraid that someone's gonna be telling you some piece of information that's not true think about that when you're ready to cold call somebody about an interview they don't know who you are they don't know where you're from is this the legitimate project is it not you know they have a lot of questions in their mind as you're asking them hey can i come over and interview you at your house so sometimes it works best to either go through an intermediary find someone who is connected with that individual and kind of approach it that way where there's a point of familiarity that this person has with the person you're you're contacting so it's a little easier to kind of break down that barrier additionally you might think about writing a letter uh to the individual as letters sometimes provide a little more legitimacy especially if you have official letterhead that you're writing on of course scammers can still use letters and things like that but it provides a much easier option for reaching out to people sometimes to not only explain in a letter what you're doing but also to provide evidence a finding aid maybe a document maybe an example of a previous interview to show them this is the project and this is what we're seeking to do now as you're thinking about the interviewee and they've agreed to the interview you want to think about what you want to know right what are some ideas family history genealogy that you want to know what do you need to know you know what what is the specific subject matter you're talking about and how do you want to engage with this person on that so you want to write a list of questions down and keep it with you as you're going along so you'll want to write questions out related to family history employment military career if applicable educational educational background and any specific elements of questions so kind of break those down by category as you're going through there so you can be specific but also broad at the same time and then use things like ancestry.com newspapers.com the local library various research means to kind of build up information about this person i always advise my students and my volunteers when they are doing questions and writing them up and doing the research to really get in that actively involved with this person and figure out their kind of story you know is there a previous history lesson about them in the newspaper you know what can we find about the census records about their family this provides not only information for your questions as you're writing them but also a kind of backup plan for if someone misremembers something or forgets something about their life especially as we get to people who are in advanced age that can sometimes be tricky um so that can be essentially beneficial and you you'll be surprised what you find sometimes i've had examples where family members had never seen you know the employment or the business advertisement in the newspaper that i found about their great grandfather they had never knew that their grandmother worked a specific job before she was married and yet their name appeared in the paper about that so sometimes that can be beneficial and enlightening for the interviewee as well you want to think about packing your supplies as you as you're getting ready to go on the interview right making sure that you have a bag that has your recording equipment all the necessary supplies your paperwork your pen and pencil your snacks maps everything be ready to record anywhere and what i mean by that is be ready to step out of your car um and go inside of a house but also be ready to record on a farm be ready to record you know outside be ready to walk and record at the same time sometimes you're a little surprised by what's going on it's best to have a a really a bag with a number of options for various things um in there to kind of handle any situation you know a plug-in versus battery power is especially a good one to think about you know cell phone charger for using your cell phone uh snacks are important too because you never know how far you're gonna have to drive or how long the interview is going to take sometimes people will request an 11 a.m interview and it can go for three hours and that's really over the lunch time so kind of having a snack before or even immediately after the interview kind of help replenish you as the day goes along um directions know where you are going we live again in an age of technology where we can plug in data into our phone to tell us where we're going um what street it's on how many minutes to the exact millisecond it's going to take to get there but sometimes people live off the beaten path sometimes their address doesn't show up in math quest or even in google maps and sometimes you have to use physical locations along the road to find your way for example i once had an interviewee who lived in a rural part of southern missouri and for the life of me i could not find their address in any sort of map app they just didn't exist so i meekly wrote them a quick email before we had our interview and said you know i'm sorry i can't really find your address could you explain how to get there off the main road um and he said you know oh it's down the hill over the bridge um and you'll go by a cemetery and immediately after the cemetery on the left is my house went down the hill over the bridge by the cemetery to the left and there their house was so sometimes it's good to know things in advance so you're not struggling to get there on time and being kind of lost along the way now when you walk into the room you want to make sure you're familiarizing yourself not only with your equipment but also with running brief sound tests beforehand um you could run an entire sound test on your computer or your phone or your recording device before you leave your house or your or your office and it could work fine but in route something could go wrong so it's always good to do a follow-up test once you arrive additionally you want to get into that room or into that location and really figure out what sounds are going to impact your recording so you'll want to kind of stand there quietly and kind of look around the room and think about you know oh there's a vent that has you know forced air coming through there there's a fan you know there's a telephone on the wall you know thinking about cell phones and cell phones being on you know passing trains cars animals other people you know you want to make sure you're aware of what could possibly cause sound problems and how that could be alleviated even before the interview starts so running a sound test is always best and people sometimes look at me kind of crazy when i walk into a room and i do some staring off into the distance for a minute or two before we do anything because i'm trying to listen for the sounds of the room before we get started now when you begin the interview you want to have an introductory statement and that provides importance because you're really talking about what the interview is who is involved with it and really providing that citation that metadata at the very beginning so that someone finds this recording in the future and they have no idea you know what the cd is or what this audio file is uh they'll be able to figure it out rather than by your introductory statement so for example you want to start with your name and your job title you know who you are working with affiliate organization or even a university and you're here today with um in the home of the interviewee so you mentioned their name in the town and the state that you're located in i'm interviewing them for an oral history excuse me accompanying us today is other people in the room so any person who is in the room you'll want to mention as well because they could randomly start talking and the person who's listening has no idea who this voice in the distance is what i try to do is have the other people in the room say their names at the beginning at this point in time where i say accompanying us that way the listener can hear their voice and hear their name in the same comment next you'll want to say the days the day's date um and then you'll want to begin enroll into your first question what i always do is do kind of a general location setting question you know when and where were you born ozark missouri 1927 or even a full date october 3rd 1927 can be helpful so that way you're providing this metadata and this information to begin with and then the interview is kind of rolling into the very beginning question now during the interview you'll want to think about a lot of things but don't let it distract you from the overall interview you're doing first of all you'll want to think about time length you know most good interviews run between an hour to three hours and that depends on the interviewee you know you could have someone who talks for exactly one hour and at the end you could think did i get everything i wanted it just could be that they're not a storyteller they get to the facts and they get to them quick and they're done other people can be storytellers and they can go on for hours so usually try to keep it to one to three hours not only to keep the time frame running but also prevent mental fatigue usually if you get past three hours of talking straight in many ways you begin to kind of get out you get tired and your memory may start to slip so in many ways sometimes you want to think about breaks either to do a two-hour block maybe take a lunch break and come out do a two-hour walk in the afternoon or even coming back the next day taking a brief break to go to the bathroom to eat a snack or get a drink can also be beneficial as well so think about the time frame and the time length as you're going through the project and think about you know this is gonna have to be a two or three day interview i've done 10 day interviews not in a row but certainly over the span of a year i've interviewed someone 10 different times because overall the interview had 18 hours because that's how much information they had to share but we weren't going to do 15 hours in one day so breaking it up over time can be beneficial for the nwe as well as for yourself you'll also want to engage with the key topics you know central theme what do you want to talk about what do you need to know what do you want in it so do you want to approach it from a chronological perspective you know birth to the present do you want to approach it thematically right we're going to talk about in this interview we're going to talk about education in this interview we're going to talk about their military experience you know think about how you want to approach each interview in terms of the time frame and the subject matter you know if it's chronological are there going to be many subjects that you need to talk about versus thematic or may just be one is this interview linked to a larger collection you know if you're talking about world war ii veterans and that's the so the subject of your project you know how does this interview's exp interviewees experience compared to interviewee a b and c that you've already done you know is there a shared experience do they know the other people that you interviewed sometimes that's a good way to link to a collection show you know all these people are from this town they all serve in world war ii and hey they all knew each other at some point in their lives try to make sure that your questions are open-ended if you ask specific questions that require a yes or no answer you'll probably get a yes and no answer and not much else so ask large broad questions know when and where were you born what did your parents do for their occupations what school did you go to do you think that you've got a quality education you know what do you think is your legacy incorrect in connection to your career larger questions that can be answered in a little detail but also kind of be expanded upon and you want to remember those important what when where why and how questions um as kind of your openers but also as your follow-up questions you know sometimes there might be a short answer that requires follow-up so be able and be ready to do follow-up questions next read the room and as i mentioned before right sitting there and understanding what sounds can be in there can be important but also read the room around you kind of understand what's going on as the interview goes along so this can be mean not only sounds outside of your control a passing car a phone ringing even a fire alarm can be out of your control but also you know remember the brakes right if you can tell someone is being uncomfortable or emotional perhaps it's time to call a break if if there's something that is overwhelmingly we wish them with emotion perhaps offering them a tissue or even a glass of water that's in front of them you know you know something to kind of offer some support for them in an emotional time non-verbal cues sometimes you can be someone in terms of sadness or happiness or even frustration over a question asked and sometimes reading that nonverbal cue can kind of guide hey this is the subject matter i can really pry into because the person is comfortable with it versus other times where i may need to you know back off a little bit because i can tell the person's getting a little flustered with what i'm asking them finally and most importantly are you recording and are you sure you are recording always make sure you keep an eye on your recording device from time to time to make sure one that the recording light is on or the recording button is on but also to make sure it's not flashing to say low battery or error message or anything like that so while you want to be engaged and look straight on to your interviewee and have that eye contact you want to from time to time gaze over to the side and keep an eye on your recording equipment and i tell people that in the interview i say you know from time to time i may look down at my recording device it's it's because i'm checking the battery and making sure the recording is working so i just tell them that in advance so they are aware of it as we go forward additionally you'll want to think about you know those awkward moments and really what is awkward in engineering well a lot of things can be how long do i wait for the follow-up question you know if i ask a question you know um tell me about your parents and the person says well my dad worked on the farm do i jump in with volkswagen about what about your mother or siblings or do i are they thinking about something you know what is what what what is the proper time to wait wait a couple of seconds and see if the person is thinking or if they're just kind of done sometimes they'll say what's the next question and that's simple enough side stories side stories can be great side stories can also be derailing um there's a kind of famous case in our oral history questions about a person who is being interviewed for collection and they went off on a 30-minute side story about something uh related to the interview but not totally related um and the interviewee for that uh for that particular project you could tell was trying to steer it back into the conversation at hand but was having a lot of difficulty so sometimes these side stories can lead you down an interesting path but sometimes you got to be aware that it's time to kind of help move the interview back to the central focus again if you could tell it's getting into a tangent controversial statements sometimes people will make controversial statements either in their own opinion or is it engaged with every week you'll want to remember that you are a neutral party in all of this that you're asking the questions you're eliciting responses and you're doing this for a project sometimes someone will say a statement and see what your statement or what your stand on that statement is to see if you agree with it or not and sometimes you just kind of have to say you know just simply provide the next question or just kind of a vague comment response to it someone could say you know i don't agree with that politics or that person in particular i think they're not smart at all um and you know you could say well you know um in thinking about that what about this particular moment or something like that where you're kind of moving the interview forward and letting the controversial statement lie again this is this person statement it's their opinion um any sort of criticism of it is going to be directed upon them not upon you so as the kind of person recording it be the neutral party finally the pause and silence right um when someone pauses and you're waiting for a follow-up question you know how long do you wait right so silence can be really really awkward and it's the most awkward thing that is in a lot of these interviews but just kind of letting the silence play out for a minute before you come back in is the best path forward in that regard drawing out details now when someone is saying a name um you'll want to follow up with a spelling of that person's name or even that place for the transcript that you do later on or just simply for people to be able to research that name um there's been a number of cases we've had people say a name very quickly um and we'll say you know can you spell that and they'll be like oh yeah yeah i'll spell that a lot of times though actually i don't know how that's spelled we'll try our best right um but that's really beneficial for a number of researchers and the transcriptionist later on down the road to get that spelling on the record or at least get it spelled out in some written form on your paperwork so that you can kind of correct that in the interview lastly using props can really help your interviewee photos newspaper clippings genealogy records additional family members can all be very beneficial for the interviewee a lot of times we'll have people especially who are are an advanced age who will ask their son or their daughter or even a sibling come along to the interview um to help out that's perfectly fine you don't want to have a large group i want the whole family showing up but sometimes a one or two people in the interview can be extremely beneficial showing them photos showing them news clippings can really jog the memory in a lot of ways for different things these extremely beneficial and can be very helpful for you um in the interview to kind of engage with the person especially if they are misremembering or forgetting certain parts of their own life that can be really beneficial for you to kind of help them think things over and re-engage it as the interview goes along now when the interview concludes you want to go through a couple quick steps to make sure that everything is completed properly and it is being saved and preserved for long term so how is your according to being saved well first of all when you hit the record button what happens if we're doing it on zoom like this instantly when this is over with the recording stops and converts to an m4a file and saves it onto a computer or onto the cloud instantly without having to push any buttons if i do it on my phone i can instantly take it and upload it to my email or to the cloud and know that it's duplicated in that form on my recording device i know that it's saved to my sd card and i can quickly transfer it over to my computer so already i'm thinking about yes the recording has saved here's how i can quickly duplicate it for the future as you're kind of running down things with the interviewee kind of small talk at the end of the interview you know you want to run through some final clarifications you know double check those name spellings and those place name spellings um ask them for additional thoughts sometimes people will remember something and you have to turn the interview the recording back on to complete the interview so sometimes it's beneficial to kind of have that small talk um and get that information um in the aftermath to think about hey we might need to have interview number two or hey you know this is the spelling the person figured out let's write that down in our in our paperwork so that we can get that corrected on the recording and on the transcript later on consent form consent forms are important because this is what controls the interview going forward the person has verbally agreed to be interviewed and their interview is now given over to you but that's still a gray area that doesn't quite give you full control of the interview so having them sign a simple consent form can be very beneficial to explain you're being interviewed on this day by this person um and this is what's going to happen to the interview going forward you know it's an agreement you know you can say we're going to send you a copy um and we're going to keep a copy in the archives or if you're doing an interview and then you plan to donate it to another archive in the future you can say in your form you know the interviewee grants full access of the interview to the interviewer who can do as it as they please up and including donating it to an archive um so that kind of allows you as an outside person to still say hey i want to donate it to you know this museum or i want to donate it to this archive so it kind of allows you in a lot of ways to make sure that the interview is being protected by all involved and make sure that everyone that participates in the interview signs on the consent form even if it's just a couple comments on the side their voice is still part of the interview make sure everyone that is involved in the interview is signing this consent form at the bottom you know and checking back in afterwards especially now in kobe 19 you know i'm checking in with a lot of my former interviewees just to see how they're doing you know many of them are living in nursing homes and you know they with the restrictions upon visitors you know they don't get as much visitors they once had so and sometimes that can be extremely beneficial to keep that relationship going um for your interviewees so making sure you send them a thank you note in the end is always very important making sure that if possible you give them a personalized copy of the interview so that they can have it for their own records if you're going to do a transcription of the interview make sure you send a copy of that to the interviewee to possibly edit it so that they can correct spellings and they can correct comments um and you understand kind of what they meant even if it's included in a footnote and that the edited version can be again sent to them as a final copy but also put into the archive and finally making sure that everyone knows the kind of the repository you may be sending it to so they can advise other people to follow up and check it out at that museum or that archive going forward lastly i want to conclude in a little bit about oral history in the digital age as i mentioned before there's a lot of different ways to record things um present day that is much different than before a lot of our original oral histories that we have in our collection are old reel to reels some of them are film some of them are on cassette tapes and we live in an we live in a time now where we are losing opportunities to preserve those cassette tapes to re preserve those reel-to-reel and it makes it much more difficult when you have to run a cassette tape through us through a electronic device to convert it to an audio file it takes a lot of time because you have to run the interview in its entirety through that through that player in present day we need to think about preservation of digital materials and make sure those files are not corrupted or destroyed so you can have recording equipment that uses sd cards that uses a usb connection to your computer um that preserves on your phone in an app and then you can convert it to your cloud or to your email you know think about ways to duplicate your files um going forward and make sure that they are preserved the preferred method of preserving audio is called a wav file wav file um it's very large file it can take up a lot of space on your computer so a lot of people are a little hesitant about it but it is the preferred long-term solution as of right now for various audio files that you do digitally i know m4a and mp3 are much smaller and easier to send through email send through the cloud account even put on your computer but you want to make sure that you have a way to make sure that they are converted into wav files for long-term preservation as i mentioned with zoom right you can use zoom equipment to preserve things as well as with skype and other software that you know allows for a video and audio recording and the great thing with zoom that we're using right now is that when it is preserved it'll save a video file as well as an audio file so you may not want the video file you just used it so you could see face to face with the interviewee but that audio file becomes quite important um so that file in and of itself can be great you know you can you can record things with your phone as i mentioned through things like voice memos with smartphones and you could still do the classic you know cassette tape that hasn't gone out of style but i will say it is much harder now to preserve long-term mini cassettes than it ever was before it's just not as easy and feasible as it once was so using something with an sd card with usb connectivity with some sort of internet connectivity can be extremely beneficial for preserving your records long term final thoughts you want to think about why this interview or this collection is important because you may have to justify it to other people you may have to explain to the interview we we're doing this interview project because of x y and z if you're seeking funding from an outside organization you need to explain why they need that why they should give money to an organization such as yourself or an individual for such for such an undertaking such a project so you need to understand why your collection is important and really be a champion for that project going forward so that other people can get on board you know once you have people on board it's a lot easier to get further interviews down the road it's amazing how something as simple as hey thanks for doing the interview if you could think of anybody else who'd be beneficial for an interview let us know you'd be surprised how many follow-ups we get just from that in a lot of our own personal interviews for the historical society as i mentioned before be careful with cold calls right we live in a scamming age where people are afraid sometimes to answer the phone because so and so is claiming that they're in jail or that they owe money to the credit card company so be wary of that by you know the way you're calling someone and approaching your project thinking about either going through an intermediary or using letterhead and mail or email to approach someone that way as well do your research try to know the person as well as they know themselves be ready for a lot of things that are going to be asked and be ready to provide context if the person is misremembering elements of their own life read the room right understand sounds that could interfere with your audio but also understand verbal and non-verbal cues that can kind of tell you about the direction of the interview and the need to take a break come back the next day or even change the subject matter completely consent forms make sure they are assigned and they are signed by everybody and that they outline what you're doing with the project and what your long-term goal is and finally and most importantly be ready for anything sometimes as i said you'll show up in a nice air-conditioned house where there's no sounds no dogs right no anything and you have a perfect two hour interview that is that is the perfect audio you could ever want and sometimes you'll show up on a rainy day on a farm in the mud and you'll be walking with this person and through their farm with your recording equipment trying to block out the wind trying to get too dirty but still getting a great interview at the same time so be ready for anything is perhaps the best thing i can suggest with oral history going forward thank you very much for joining us today and i'll turn it back over to maggie um for questions and comments awesome thanks sean uh the first question is from brad and could you say again which equipment you personally are using for your oral histories oh sure absolutely we use what's called an h5 zoom recording device um there is a number of opportunities it's confusing because zoom is a software that we're using right now but there's also a zoom recorder you can buy that on a number of recording device websites also you can look at on amazon and the h is kind of the number affiliated with the various models so an h1 model of zoom is the most simple model they have it's very small it basically just handles interviews and then kind of the usb connectivity and that's about it whereas an h5 or even an h6 or an h4 will allow you to kind of edit on the device allow you to delete things off the device allows a lot of different technological advancements that an h1 doesn't have but there are a number of things to use through the zoom models that they have but an h5 is the specific model that we have currently that we're using in oral history sean next question is from susan who wonders could you speak to how do i ask the right questions of my interviewee to get the best interview sure and sometimes you have to go with the flow on this one um i'll give you a great example of of one of my uh kind of i won't say favorite but one of the more lasting interviews i ever had uh was an interview interview with a person who suffered a great tragedy in their life um but it was one part of their story they had this long lustrous career before the tragedy and they had a long illustrious career after the tragedy but that tragedy is something that in their minds marked their entire life like everyone talked to them about that tragedy anybody who ever approached them about you know an interview or even some sort of media always ask about this event in their life um and we went through the entire first part of the interview and the person we took a break and the person said you haven't asked me any questions about this event and i said well there's more in your life than just that event as you've stated yourself in various times about this interview i was like i want to talk to you about it but at the same time there's a larger story to be held and the person said okay we can talk about that that event but i don't want to get into the personal elements of it i read that immediately as being you know don't ask me about how it affected my personal life because i don't want to get involved in that kind of question so i didn't touch it at first i just said i asked him basic questions about the event i got the historical analysis that was important about that and we left off the personal element of it and then at the end i just had kind of that last moment and i said you know um you know what do you want your legacy to be you know people think of you connected to this event but what do you people when they say your name to think about um and the person paused and you know they said you know that's a pretty weighty question but i'd want them to think about this and he kind of talked about a little bit of his personal life and he paused and then he said i think i'm ready to talk about the event from a personal perspective and he kind of doubled back and talked about that again in a lot of ways so sometimes it's kind of feeling the flow of the interview but also kind of i would suggest doing it chronologically as you go along but being mindful of the need to double back from time to time so if someone's talking about things they'll sometimes think about their career and they'll say oh this is an interview about my career or this business so i was born in this day and my parents name this i went to this school i graduated from high school in the state and i graduated from college on this date boom boom boom and they're ready to go on to their career you got to slow them down from time to time and double back and say you know you know what what school did you go to were some influential teachers that you had what were your favorite subjects sometimes you just want to draw out a lot of questions with these kind of follow-ups to really get the information that you want so you want to think about the theme of it if it's going to be an interview about a sports figure from the local community you'll want to talk about that sports career but also have those other questions to really develop a life story so in a lot of ways not only thinking about a longer life story and about kind of things you want to engage with um really check a lot of oral histories that have already been done if this is your first one especially you know read through and listen to other oral histories and think about the questions that that other interviewees at our interviewer is asking and how they're engaging that material so really practice makes perfect in a lot of ways for completing an interview you want to think about you know the questions that you're formulating but also thinking about what other people can have asked can be an enlightening moment as well kind of developing your questions so there's there's right and wrong questions to ask depending upon the interview but in a lot of ways just thinking about the theme thinking about the person's life story that you've researched but also thinking about kind of the flow of the interview and past interviews can be helpful as well do you recommend only audio interviews or is video a better choice when interviewing for life stories so interesting element of that um i had never thought about this before until i started doing this job we think about video interviews with a lot of documentaries right we always have the talking head who's going to tell us a story or provide some context about a historical event this is the preferred method we're used to doing with a lot of oral histories is to have that video but you will find that a lot of people are uncomfortable being on video they much prefer audio to video in a lot of ways and you have to kind of in some cases consent to the video explain what you're going to do and really kind of go through the steps for someone to be comfortable on video i've had a lot of people who when we've suggested an interview have said this is not going to be on video right and we'll be like well we can do audio if you prefer or we can do video so in a lot of ways we assume people are always recorded on video but there is a a notable um group of people that i've especially encountered with who do want nothing to do with the video interview audio only is their preferred method in a lot of ways so think about your project if it's just going to be audio oral histories don't worry about it if you want to have some sort of video connected to it if you want to have it for a documentary if you want to have you know a movie or something like that you'll want to definitely focus on video but you may have to approach it from the idea being we may have to have a picture with a voice over in the background because this person may not be comfortable with it so you'd be surprised about people who prefer audio to video overall uh kind of a related question would you recommend recording on more than one device during an interview um they said for example perhaps with the zoom recorder as well as a camcorder to try and sort of have two two copies as you go with your interview sure yeah that could definitely be done whenever i do zoom recordings like this i will record it through zoom and i will also run my recorder my z my h5 recorder in the background um to get it as well it's not going to have the same audio quality as the computer will with zoom but at least i know there are duplicate copies running at the same time also in interviews where we've had a separate group doing the filming and i will record with my own recording device in the background as well just so that there's extra copies in case so i don't always do it if i have my h5 recorder with me i would just use my h5 and kind of go with it but if there are especially video interviews i will always have a backup audio recording running um at the same time to get the the the audio as well just in case there is you know when you have a video equipment you have mic set up you have all the kind of glitz and glamour camera work set up it can be a little dicey so sometimes you want to have that back up on us there's something going forward in case you know all the wonderful things with the video you know don't work next question comes from jamie and it's actually a two-part question first is asking how you archive the files and the same says currently they have them on cds but do you keep a digital version on a hard drive and physical cd backup and then related is do you transcribe the answers and the interviews for a searchable document so what we do with ours is we save it in three forms so when i conclude an interview i will come back to my office and i will plug my h5 recording device in computer and i transfer the wav file from my recorder onto my computer that way i've immediately set a duplicate there is a copy of my computer and there's a copy on my recorder then i will save it in two different files on my computer one on an external hard drive and one on a server essentially so that i know there are two separate copies there so now there are three copies and then i will delete the original off my zoom recorder because it takes up space and i only have so much audio time on my zoom so once it is duplicated on my computer and on the external server i will delete it off my recorder and save files um so that i know they are saved in two different places on that on that one and then i will when i do the transcription we will have a transcript word for word of the original interview um done at some point not sometimes it's right away sometimes it's farther on down the road and we will have a copy of that um made and then we send that copy to the interviewee they can look it over make sure they are okay with what they said and then they will send it back we will edit it and then we will have a final copy meanwhile the audio that i've made in duplicate copies on my computer i will then burn onto a cd and i will have three copies of two on my computer one on a cd and then i will have the final transcript copy as well so we save it four different ways really three different ways if you think about the computer being two but we save it in three different ways so we have a written copy ac copy um and finally a digital wave file copy as well uh the next several questions are about transcriptions could you speak to um if you contract first transcripts or rely on staff and volunteers and if you recommend any transcription software sure so that's a number of different ways to approach that there are transcription softwares that will say that they will do it you'll send it to them they'll turn around at a certain number of hours or days and send it back to you um there are a wide variety of those so i don't really recommend a specific type because they kind of depend upon your price range um and your length of audio and everything like that but you can certainly find them rather easy online we currently use an outside transcriptionist for some of ours so we have a specific budget for the year for oral history and a small portion of that goes towards this outside transcription cost that's usually for when we want things to be transcribed very quickly in a matter of time or a quick turnaround or simply just to kind of unload on our um our backlog of oral histories over time we will also have myself doing transcription work as well as well as volunteers and interns who handle it over time um and it can be a it's a it's a challenging project to undertake it's one of my interns least favorite projects to do to transcribe from scratch um so they know some i will admit some of them really love it so if you find someone who loves to transfer from scratch keep that person around as best as you can because they are a gym um so we've had people who are really eager to do that they really find that fascinating um sometimes a lot of people who just do minor transcription work i'll take care of it we'll also hire out as well from time to time we use when we transcribe in-house we use a software called start stop which is a little box app that you can pull up on your computer you load your audio file into it and you can run it at a varying speeds you can run it all the way down to one percent all the way up to 150 percent so it can either be really slow or sound like you know alvin and the chipmunks if you run it really fast um so we run that it also comes with a foot pedal which you can reverse fast forward and stop with you're just using your foot so you can type and use your left or right foot as you're kind of recycling back or you're going forward or you want to stop the audio at the same time and that's really extremely beneficial when you're doing transcribing from scratch so that's called start stop that we use for that one do you edit the recordings after the interviews for time or do you present as recorded we try to do as close to the original interview as possible we will have people who will write back to us after they listen to it or they will read the transcript and say can you make me sound a little more educated because what i mean by that is when we talk we don't usually think about a complete sentence where if we write we think about oh this is i want to write this sentence perfectly i want to lay it out perfectly whereas when we talk you know we can be off the cuff we can just have random thoughts you know we don't think about our sentence structure um so when we hear it later on we're like oh my gosh this is what i sound like why am i just talking like this so we always advise people we're keeping it as close to the original audio as possible now where editing comes into play is a couple of things one is that there is a lot of noise in the background and the and the interview has to stop for a minute we might edit that out of the final copy just so he'll mess with doesn't have to listen to you know the interviewee coughing for a couple of minutes before they get a drink of water or hear a dog barking over a certain segment before the person stops and re-says everything after the dog has been taken out of the room we will also do select editing if someone requests a certain section to be removed and that's on a case-by-case basis sometimes we'll have people who will say something and at the end they'll say you know that probably wasn't nice of me to say that about them could we possibly take that out of the recording we certainly talk about that like i said on a case-by-case basis about how we want to edit that on either the transcript or even on the audio or both for the finalized copy so sometimes we allow that we usually tell people ahead of time if there's something you want to say and you're concerned it's going to be controversial or you don't want to put on the record tell us and we'll stop the recording you can tell us the story and we'll do recording again afterwards so we have to tell people that beforehand but some people will say that afterwards as well if they would like to have some sort of edit of a certain section because of what they said and usually it's pretty minor we've never had someone say scratch the entire last third of the interview or anything like that but just be mindful people might ask for certain edits and certainly approach that from a case-by-case basis next question is from jennifer and she wants to know what are some maybe mistakes that you've made or things that didn't go as you hoped in an interview that you would know how to handle better or handle differently now sure i'll give you the perfect example of one that i kicked myself the whole three hours back from the interview for so i interviewed an astronaut um one of my first interviews i think it was like my fourth or fifth interview i ever did interviewed an astronaut um about their life and experiences great interview i to this day i still think it's a great interview we had a good camaraderie going with the with the conversation and the questions um the interview is very open about discussing certain things he mentioned at one point that his family bought a tv um in 1969 and he left it at that and i didn't think to ask him well did you watch the moon landing on your tv like an astronaut talk about the moon lane talk about nasa right talk about you know the apollo missions and i never thought to go back to double back later on and ask him if the tv was connected with that and to get that story on the record so as soon as i realized that afterwards i kicked myself the whole way drive back i was like i cannot believe i forgot to do that other times i've had examples where i've sent people questions to review ahead of time and there's no context with the question so sometimes people will feel comfortable if you send them a list of brief questions so they can think about it they can kind of think about their answers and how they want to approach it and one time i sent someone a list of questions just kind of off the off the cuff kind of just some basic questions and the person interpreted my questions completely differently than i did and actually said they were offended by some of the questions that were on the list um we had a brief conversation before the interview started and kind of set the set the stage of kind of what was meant by the questions and things like that so you might provide context if you send questions out to people and say you know these are basic questions we ask everybody so it may not apply to you specifically but these are a list of questions we usually ask because the person felt that it was not direct questions directed to them and they were concerned about why certain questions were being asked when it didn't really apply to their life i had to explain to them that it was a general list of questions that we send out you know genealogy family history things like that so we kind of patched things up rather quickly but they were concerned at first when they first got the questions about why it was so vague about things and then certain things that didn't apply to them so certainly i think about that now when i approach questions especially if i'm going to send them to people in advance um really in a lot of ways there will be times when you think about something after the fact and it's always that awkward moment if you want to contact the person again to get that five minutes of audio or if you just want to forget about it so sometimes that can be kind of difficult but i would say you get better with every interview it just takes time so your first interview will sound you know when you listen to it you'll get kind of the chills about how awkward it sounds sometimes but over time you build up and you're kind of prepared for a lot of things and you're prepared for kind of various questions so you'll have people who are kind of the world's greatest interviewees right they'll answer every question and detailed responses they'll answer everything you want to ask them excuse me and then they will provide all background information and other people will just give you one word answers and they'll basically give you the vibe that let's get this over with and you can get out of here kind of thing so you just kind of have to kind of roll with the flow ask the questions you're going to ask and just kind of keep in mind about the room right read the room like i said before and be ready for anything all right just a few more questions before we wrap up today sean uh next question is do you take any handwritten notes as you go along during an interview yes i actually have a clipboard that i take and it has in this order it has my interview questions it has my consent form if it has not already been signed and it has um all research that i've done behind it too it's actually a complete file so it'll have newspaper articles i pulled up about that person highlighted with specific information it will have things i printed off from ancestor.com from newspapers.com any photographs i've made photocopies of there's a lot of things that i make for a biographical file about someone so that if they say you know i've researched this person and i say oh your father worked for this railroad and they say he never worked for that railroad and i'll pull out that piece of paper like that newspaper clipping and say oh is this not your father and sometimes they'll say no that's just someone's similar name or sometimes they'll say oh my gosh i didn't realize that my grandfather or my father worked for this railroad so sometimes it's good to have that background of information so i have a list of questions written out usually i do about three pages and i leave a blank fourth page for other additional questions on the spot or any comments i want to write out as the interviews going along i will include the consent form and i will conclude include all research materials i have i have collected for the interview as well great um next question um how do you feel about interviewing two people together uh for example two vietnam veterans who serve together it's difficult it can be difficult what i would recommend because this is this has happened is approach the people at the beginning and say do you want to be interviewed at the same time or separately because you could do back to back on the same day we've had some people who went to the same squinter schoolhouse and we say do you want to be interviewed together since you went to school together no we want to have separate interviews so we'll do one and then the other back-to-back there was another time where i had another one-room schoolhouse interview where i went to i just went to interview the one woman who had been a teacher at a one room schoolhouse just assuming i was just going to show up at her house interview her and i walked in and there was two other people in the room and i was trying to be nice and courteous and be like oh nice to meet you glad you could be here i'm reading the room with my ears remember so i'm thinking more people in the room more sound in the room my house is gonna they're gonna tell stories that's gonna get us off track and as the interview went along i quickly realized because they didn't tell me the beginning that they had also gone to one room schoolhouses so as the interview was unfolding i'm beginning to realize i need to get their stories as well in addition to the main interviewee so i begin to kind of unravel and having to go back and kind of do their life stories in the midst of the rest of the interview so that was an especially tricky one to not forget about the main interviewee but to also get these other stories in the moment as well now with veterans that can be something that can be tricky as well because they know each other be more comfortable with talking at the same time or together in one interview if they kind of know each other to talk about their experiences in war next to one another you may want to might want to separate the interviews out over time certainly to address it to with them as you get to the start and say would you like to record together or would you like to record separately so you may think about just starting with one person running to a certain part in their life and then doubling back so let's talk about birth to you know high school okay next person birth to high school okay now you've got them at the same point in their lives so now you can say you're joining the military after high school let's talk about why you both join the military and then you can kind of bring their stories together in that way so sometimes you have to kind of have separate ends and tie them together halfway through the interview okay last two questions for you today sean um if i want to use an oral history in a publication what is the best way to cite it um through um the various patients that you're going to use so you'll want to check with a citation that you're preferring mla apa chicago turabian style so those should be available in those specific style of style citation manuals um they'll have everything you can think of in terms of how to cite them properly on our website there in the past have been examples for most of our finding aids and for most of our information about how to cite that specific collection going forward so you may look in if you're going to use an oral history from a certain organization they may have already included a section on their website for how you cite manuscripts here's how you cite oral histories like that but you'll also want to think about the preferred style citation style of the publication that is printing it as well so that you can figure out how best to cite that for their uh requirements and then last question that we'll do live is do you have tips for transitioning to zoom or other digital interviews during the pandemic sure so this is difficult time to do interviews um i can say that from my own experience interestingly enough i've asked people right now that i'm trying to interview i just say i can do this right now through zoom or you can call into my computer software and we can record it that way an overwhelming majority people so far have said i would prefer a face-to-face interaction with an interview and as travel is kind of restricted right now i can't do that so i have to say okay when i can travel again i will contact you again to kind of set that up so there's been a lot of continued support for this face-to-face interaction but zoom is a great alternative in a lot of ways um and the best way to really do that is one is just kind of get on zoom you can make a free account so it doesn't cost you anything to make a free account um and if you're doing per person interviewing um it's a free it's free and it's unlimited amount of time so you could have a four hour interview if it's just you and another person on the recording if it's several people and you have the free account it limits you to about 40 minutes of actual recording time before it kicks you off so you want to be aware of that as well but the free account on zoom um is really great you can get on there and kind of play around with it for a while you can record videos of just yourself through your computer's um trying to think uh webcam um and through your computer's microphone as well um and you can kind of figure out okay this is how it's gonna record this is how it's gonna look and you can really you know contact someone you may like a family member or loved one and really contact them and set something up and kind of talk back and forth about how it's going to work as well to kind of get yourself familiarized with it before you do any sort of interview so really play around with something like zoom um use your voice memo on your phone or other apps just kind of test them out you know hit the record button and just talk for a while and then when you're done see kind of what you can do in terms of preservation for that recording and things like that so really just trying it out being comfortable with it is a great way and with a lot of things with kova 19 you know zoom and other apps are well aware that they are being used in a lot of ways right now so they have updated a lot of things on their websites to explain hey if you're going to do this try this or you may think about doing this so a lot of these companies have kind of come through and offered a lot of um troubleshooting and a lot of helpful ideas for using their various products because they realize that people are using them more than ever right now thank you so much sean thanks so much for all the good content and for answering so many questions if we did not get a chance to get to your question today please feel free to reach out to sean directly i've included his email rost s at hsmo.org again thank you so much for joining us thank you so much for your time sean i hope you all have a great afternoon thank you you