Oral History: How Interviews Become Historical Evidence

Much of the past was never written down. Ordinary people rarely left diaries, and official records describe events from the point of view of the people who kept them. Oral history fills some of that gap by recording people describing their own experiences in their own words.

It is also one of the most debated kinds of evidence. Memory is vivid but changeable, and an interview is shaped by the person asking the questions as well as the person answering. Good oral history takes both facts seriously.

This guide explains what oral history is, how practitioners collect it, and how historians use it, drawing on the standards of the Oral History Association (OHA) and the guidance of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS).

What oral history is

The OHA defines oral history as "a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving, and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events." The term covers both the interview process and the recording or transcript that results.

The OHA describes two broad kinds of interview: life histories, which follow a narrator through their life, and topical interviews, in which narrators are chosen for their knowledge of a particular subject or event. The OHA also calls oral history "the oldest type of historical inquiry," rooted in oral traditions that predate writing, while noting that the modern practice grew up alongside recording technology, from wax cylinders and wire recorders to tape and digital devices.

The OHA stresses one feature above others: an interview is a collaboration. Interviewers bring research and questions, but narrators "shape the interview based on what they deem to be relevant, meaningful, or appropriate to share."

What it adds to the record

The National Park Service, which uses oral history at many of its sites, lists several things interviews can do that written records often cannot. They can capture multiple perspectives on past events and document information not found in written archives.

The NPS gives concrete examples from its parks:

• At Manzanar National Historic Site, which preserves the history of Japanese Americans incarcerated there during World War II, a 2006 interview with Madelon Arai Yamamoto helped identify the location of a fish pond her father had built beside the barracks where the family lived. Oral history guided physical, archaeological work.
• At Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, some 850 interviews conducted between 2001 and 2005 recorded the men who trained as the first African American military aviators during World War II, along with support staff and airmen's wives. The interviews informed the rehabilitation of historic buildings and museum exhibits.
• At Andersonville National Historic Site, home to the National Prisoner of War Museum, staff have conducted more than a thousand interviews with former prisoners of war, civilian internees and their families.

The NPS also lists Civilian Conservation Corps alumni and immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island among the people whose stories it has recorded.

Planning a project

The OHA identifies four key elements of oral history work: preparation, interviewing, preservation and access. Its best practices begin before any recording starts:

1. Find a repository, such as a library or archive, that can preserve the finished interviews and make them available.
2. Research the topic and the narrator in primary and secondary sources so you can ask informed questions.
3. Explain the project to each narrator, including how the recording will be stored and used, and obtain and document their informed consent.
4. Prepare an open-ended guide of themes and questions rather than a rigid script.

The NPS adds a useful step: write a short mission statement describing the project's purpose, who will be interviewed and how the interviews will be used.

Conducting the interview

The NPS interviewing guidance is practical and specific. Choose a quiet, comfortable location and deal with background noise such as a radio or television. Begin each recording with a short statement of the interviewer's and narrator's names, the date, the location and the project name, and ask for the narrator's verbal consent.

Start with simple questions, such as where and when the narrator was born, and save sensitive topics for later. Ask questions that begin with who, what, when, how and why, and follow up with prompts like "Can you give me an example of that?"

Neutral wording matters. The NPS suggests replacing a question like "Did you disagree with the policies of the new superintendent?" with "What did you think of the new superintendent's policies?" The first invites a yes or no and hints at the expected answer; the second leaves room for the narrator's own view. Above all, the guidance reminds interviewers that they are there to listen: "This is the narrator's story; give them the chance to tell it."

The OHA adds that narrators have the right to refuse to discuss certain subjects, to restrict access to an interview, and in some circumstances to use a pseudonym. Interviewers should secure a signed legal release, ideally when the interview is complete.

Preserving and sharing interviews

A recording that cannot be played in twenty years is lost evidence. The OHA advises making redundant copies of the original recording soon after the interview and storing them in different physical locations, using nonproprietary formats where possible, and assuming that every media format will eventually become obsolete.

Access matters as much as storage. The OHA encourages archives to provide transcripts, indexes with time stamps linked to the recording, or detailed summaries, so that later researchers can find what they need.

Using oral history as evidence

Historians have long debated what oral history is for. In the OHA's own account of its standards, a coeditor of one of the earliest anthologies described a debate, which flourished in the late 1970s and early 1980s, over whether oral history was "(1) a set of primary source documents or (2) a process for constructing history from oral sources."

Either way, the OHA's core principles are frank about the nature of the material. Because it relies on memory, oral history "captures recollections about the past filtered through the lens of a changing personal and social context." The principles also ask practitioners to stay sensitive to differences in power between interviewer and narrator, and to the differing interests and expectations each brings to the relationship.

For people using interviews later, the OHA's best practices include:

• avoiding stereotypes and misrepresentations of the narrator's words
• recognizing the subjectivity of the interview and, where possible, verifying information presented as factual
• interpreting the narrative in its context
• citing where the full oral history can be found

In practice, that means treating an interview like any other source. A narrator may be the only witness to how an event felt, while a newspaper or official record pins down when it happened. Comparing the two is often where the most interesting history appears; our guide to weighing historical evidence covers how to do that.

Key takeaways

• Oral history is both a method of recording memories and the recordings and transcripts that result.
• It captures perspectives and details that written archives often miss.
• Good practice starts before recording: research, a repository, informed consent and an open-ended question guide.
• Ask neutral, open questions, listen more than you talk, and secure a signed release.
• Treat interviews as valuable but subjective evidence, verified where possible against other sources.

Sources

• Oral History Association, Oral History: Defined
• Oral History Association, OHA Core Principles
• Oral History Association, Oral History Best Practices
• Oral History Association, Principles and Best Practices (revised 2018)
• National Park Service, Oral History Resources
• National Park Service, Oral History Resources: Interviewing
• National Park Service, Oral History Resources: Using Oral History