9/1/2004
By Erika Dreifus
Learn how to grill your grandparents and quiz your cousins about family history details. Our guide outlines the key steps for planning, executing and preserving oral history interviews.
Talk About it.
First, take a moment to think about what “oral history” really is. In one sense, as the Baylor University Institute for Oral History's Workshop on the Web <
www3.baylor.edu/Oral_Htstory/Workshop.htm> notes, it's an interviewing process. But it's also a product, because in the end, you have an audio- or videotape of that interview — you've created a new historical document.
Great. But why should anyone bother to undertake this work? In Like It Was: A Complete Guide to Writing Oral History (Teachers & Writers Collaborative), Cynthia Stokes Brown notes that the information gleaned from oral history interviews may not be available elsewhere. Even better, interviews are opportunities to strengthen family relationships and explore your ancestors' lives — a process that can be an enjoyable bonding experience for you and your interview subject.
Anita De Felice, president of Gifts of the Past, a family history keepsake company, <www.giftsofthepa5t.com>, emphasizes the beyond -just-the-facts benefits of interviewing relatives. “What you ideally hope to do is ‘add meat to the genealogical bones,’ to bring your family history to life by finding out the stories, meanings and perceptions behind the facts,” says De Felice. “For example, you know when your grandparents got married, but do you know how they met? How they courted? Or whether their parents approved of the marriage?”