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Re: Speaking of Oral History...



To Daniel Sokolow:

My husband and I do oral history workshops.  I think the best recent book
of advice on the field is Donald Ritchie's DOING ORAL HISTORY. It
includes project-setup advice and is comprehensive enough to touch upon
almost anything you might need to know. It's bibliography would lead you
to the others.

Sometimes I have done "free" workshops because local historical agencies
contact me or the college where I teach asking for help. You might
contact a nearby college history department and ask if they have anyone
who does oral history or supervises students doing it. What I have done
is set up for-credit internships for the students to learn how to do oral
history (from me) and then the students can be part of the interview
team. You and your fellow employees could take such workshops and conduct
interviews in the same team effort. I have done this as a community
service or for an honorarium. By the way, hiring professionals to come in
and do it is not as expensive as you think, if you do need to do that.
The kinds of projects we've done with students have been about local
history and I'm not sure everyone would view corporate history as being
as suitable for students as local history. If a college has a larger oral
history/public history/graduate history program, though, they might.

My forthcoming book BRINGING YOUR FAMILY HISTORY TO LIFE THROUGH SOCIAL
HISTORY has a chapter on adapting professional oral history to family
purposes. If you want to know specific questions formulated to a period
of American history, William Fletcher's RECORDING YOUR FAMILY HISTORY is
especially good. You would probably want your questions tailored to the
corporation's history?

As for your specific questions: transcribing is the most time-consuming
part and people to do it can be expensive. Students should learn to do
that too. A transcriber (the machine) costs about $200.00 and is well
worth it to make the person's job easier.

As for audio or video, audio is cheaper and what most people use. It can
be more comfortable for the interviewees and more portable. Video is good
for multiple interviewees at the same time, or if there will be something
else visually worth recording.

I hope some of this helps.

Kathy Sturdevant, historian


On Fri, 14 Jul 2000 12:45:16 -0400 Daniel Sokolow
<daniel_sokolow@MCGRAW-HILL.COM> writes:
> From: Daniel Sokolow@MCGRAW-HILL on 07/14/2000 12:45 PM
>
>
> To:   archives@listserv.muohio.edu
> cc:
> Subject:  Speaking of Oral History...
>
> Lynda's request about transcribers brought to mind a request.  I've
> been pushing
> for an oral history update to our collection of interviews (the most
> recent date
> from 1982), and we're toying with ideas of how to go about it.  The
> cheapest
> route involves in-house employees (read: me) conducting the
> interviews, and
> then, I suppose, sending the tapes out to be transcribed.
>
> Can anyone offer some sage advice to a complete know-nothing about
> the best ways
> to run such a project?  I've already thought about hiring
> professionals, but I
> suspect the cost is simply going to be unmanageable.  I imagine that
> I would
> need to do some research, draw up my list of interviewees, then try
> & prepare a
> list of questions for each subject, then interview them while
> (hopefully) they
> still have all their marbles.
>
> I'd probably do well to take a workshop on this - any suggestions
> for a good
> place to try?  I'm also considering using both audio and video tapes
> - is this
> commonly done at this point?  Finally, can anyone give me a sense of
> the costs
> of doing this in-house vs. contracting out?  Is there a cost per
> tape hour for
> in-house work as well as outside?
>
> Any advice is appreciated, and feel free to respond off-list.  If I
> get enough
> usable answers, I'll summarize on-list.
>
> Daniel
>
>
> Daniel Sokolow
> Corporate Archivist
> The McGraw-Hill Companies
> 1221 Avenue of the Americas
> New York, NY 10020
> daniel_sokolow@mcgraw-hill.com
>
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Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>