Conducting an interview

Good morning. I'm going to be talking about the middle part of the oral history process – conducting the interview. In a way, that's the easiest part of all, because you're dealing with people, not platforms. In a way, it's the hardest part, because you're dealing with people, not platforms. But I'm confident in saying it's the part that will be richest in discovery for you – because you're dealing with people, not platforms. Not to derogate our good friend technology, but there's only going to be a finite number of devices, applications, and programs you need to be familiar with at any one time. But there are as many different people for you to experience as there are people for you to interview. Three and a half years ago, I had never done an oral history in my life. I'd never had anything to do with oral histories, beyond reading them. Since then I've instigated, scheduled, researched, written questions for, conducted, transcribed, and followed up on roughly 60 such interviews. I've transcribed dozens more for other people. I've written metadata for and 2 uploaded to CONTENTdm hundreds of others. I've sifted and redacted and excerpted and edited parts of individual oral histories into collective oral histories which have been published by my institution, Gettysburg College. The learning curve was steep at first, especially since I'm not by nature the kind of person who contacts strangers asking if I can interview them about their lives. But if I can get a few basic things learned, to the point where I feel confident talking to the next person, and the next person, and the person after that, I have no doubt you can. So let me take you through a few things that my experience has shown me. Making contact. Most of the time, you're going to seek to interview someone you don't know. You're going to be contacting them out of the clear blue, asking them to open up about some potentially sensitive aspects of their personal and perhaps private history. That's a big deal. How often have you been asked that? You want to approach each subject as you'd approach a skittish horse, and the best method may depend on the person. For people over a certain age, who might not tend to be regular email users, the more old-fashioned methods – a letter, a cold call – might …