Oral History Education

As families and communities seek to understand their history, oral historians and museum professionals seek to document and interpret history in meaningful ways. Our upcoming Bay Area workshop on August 14th brings these groups together for an all-day seminar that teaches interviewing skills, audio and video recording techniques, photograph preservation, and multi-media applications for oral history projects.

Click here for details on the workshop schedule and how to register.

There is a natural need to understand the past, and there can be healthy outcomes for families and community members who make the effort to document their history. Today, we can connect to an earlier generation who overcame the challenges of the Great Depression, who faced social just issues during the civil rights movement, or who created strategies for healing after war.  For example, in a recent story published yesterday by the Sun Sentinal, a Florida family has found inspiration in a legacy of leadership, through the stories of an earlier generation that overcame the many obstacles of bias at that time, and did so with integrity. The Mizell family story appears to provide strength to its family members today.  Don Mizell, the article’s author states, “As we look to the future, the challenge before us now is to forge a new path of collective achievement using our family’s rich traditional values.The Mizells were, and continue to be, true pioneers. Unfortunately, there are many who continue to settle here in South Florida who remain unaware of these overlooked but still laudable figures from our state’s rich history. We’re doing our part to change that.”

I look forward to the August 14th workshop, and helping others to connect to their family or community history.

Oral historians are documenting personal experiences, as history was lived by individuals, within very diverse subject areas and within small and large institutions. Good examples abound, and include oral histories with American diplomats at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s oral history program with American inventors.

Classroom projects continue to produce valuable insight as the young are helped by earlier generations to understand history from a personal perspective. Wherever we are, at the heart of our work is the interview process.

I am intrigued and constantly curious about the interview process and have a passion for learning more about it. Connecting with an interviewee taps into our social skills as well as technique, and that connection makes a tremendous difference in the dialogue that results if we are deep and active listeners. Interviewees undergo a form of self-discovery during an interview, and listening skills are the key to supporting this process. In my classroom work with college students, 8th graders and high school students, I’ve seen this connection develop between generations, giving inspiration to an interviewee to share his/her experience. I’ve also witnessed it from professionals who have created interviewing techniques that produce detailed, and very valuable documentation of historic events and issues. Inevitably, whether you are a student or a veteran practitioner in the field, we are profoundly changed by our interviews, and continually learning from each interview.

In this first blog entry, I would like to share short excerpts of two interviews that highlight the interview process, and hope to learn more from readers who can share their experiences with me. Truly valuable workshops and material from the Oral History Association launched me into this field early on, and continue to inspire me. My goal for this blog is to facilitate learning from one another about this process.

During my most recent interview, I was able to link to my own experience in a way that was helpful in developing questions, and facilitating sincere dialogue with a well-known musician and singer, Mickey Thomas of Starship.

My memories as a voice student in college aided me as I thought of questions for Mickey. Although this is one of my more informal interviews, the experience has given me more confidence as I develop my own style, while remaining committed to the standards set for interviewing within the field. The field of oral history has led me to become a multimedia artist and editor in addition to a practioner, and this interview demonstrates my interpretive approach using photographs, music and interview audio. (Community college courses can change a career!)

The second example comes from a terrific experience I had interviewing an oral historian with the Smithsonian, Maggie Dennis, an historian with the Lemelson Center at the National Museum of American History. Maggie was generous with her time and helpful with her insight into the interview process. I was sincerely curious about her approach to interviewing American inventors as she strives to document their creative process in detail, and in different fields of invention – medicine, chemistry, dance, music, etc. Click here to listen to an excerpt of her interview:  DennisShortMP3

I hope these two excerpts are useful and look forward to comments.