Planning a Community Oral History Project

Barbara W Sommer, Nancy MacKay, Mary Kay Quinlan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315422510
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

The second book in the five-volume Community Oral History Toolkit walks you through all the planning steps to travel from an idea to a completed collection of oral history interviews. Informed by an extensive survey of oral historians from across the country, this guide will get you started on firm ground so you don't get mired in unforeseen problems in the middle of your project. Designed especially for project administrators, it identifies participants and responsibilities that need to be covered, and details planning needs for everything from budgeting to technology, and from legal issues to ethics. Planning a Community Oral History Project sets the stage for the implementation steps outlined in Volume 3, Managing a Community Oral History Project.

Chapter 1

Introduction

BEST PRACTICE NO. 1
Familiarize yourself with the Oral History Association’s guidelines.

BEST PRACTICE NO. 2
Focus on oral history as a process.

BEST PRACTICE NO. 5
Make a plan.

Maybe it happens at a college reunion or at a neighborhood potluck. Or maybe the cultural center where your work has received a grant to document the center’s history but no one at the center knows how. It can happen any time or any place, but most community oral history projects begin with an “aha moment” when someone realizes, “We’ve got a story to tell and it needs to be recorded and preserved for future generations.” Planting the seed for an oral history project is the first step. Sometimes months or years pass before the idea for an oral history project is implemented. But the idea comes first. Don’t let this important moment pass.

As Executive Director of Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Anne Huang mixed with the locals in Oakland’s Chinatown every day. In restaurants, in businesses, in dance and cooking classes offered at the Center, Anne heard stories, casually told, of old times in Chinatown—immigration stories, stories of a family business, of learning English, and of learning new ways. She had never heard of oral history, but she knew she was in the midst of a treasure trove of stories, and not only that, of an important slice of history that could only be documented within this community. Coincidentally, a history graduate student was working at the Center and a chance conversation turned to the topic of oral history as a way of documenting recent history at the local level.

At this point the seed was planted. Anne was sold on oral history as a way of accomplishing her purpose. She learned about oral history and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center conducted a successful oral history project, capturing the stories of elders, and at the same time, the history of a community in its members’ own words. The oral histories now are held in libraries to help future generations understand this important way of life.

Does this sound familiar? Often oral history projects begin as a vague sense that the collective story of a community needs to be told; or conversely, as an urgent response to a piece of history that is rapidly disappearing. Community leaders hear about oral history and decide to use it for their purpose. They have access to community networks and they know the local stories. But they often lack expertise on doing oral history.

That’s where this planning volume comes in. Many communities new to oral history will conduct some interviews and be done with it. We believe there is more to preserving community stories than that and project planning can help make the difference. Through project planning, community members can design a structure that supports doing, preserving, and maintaining access to oral history interviews and interview information—protecting the stories for many generations to come.

Methodology and Volume Organization

Preparation for this volume took much time and thought. My co-authors and I wanted to cover the information most helpful to community oral historians. Our efforts combined research and hands-on interaction. We did literature searches, read and reviewed oral history publications and comments on the oral history listserv (H-Oralhist), attended the annual Oral History Association meetings, participated in planning several community oral history projects, and discussed and reviewed planning steps in community oral history workshops. All of this helped us think about planning and its importance to oral history.

In addition to our own experience, we wanted to know how other oral history practitioners approach project planning. Based on our research and community outreach, we developed a short planning survey and sent it to community oral historians across the country. On it, we identified basic oral history planning steps and asked for comments about each one.

The results of the survey were enlightening. Respondents were forthcoming with information and insights about what worked for them—and what didn’t. They commented on planning teams, the role of a planning director, mission statements, interviewer training, transcribing, equipment, repositories, budgets, grants—all steps that are part of oral history planning. Throughout this volume, you will find their quotes and comments about community oral history project planning. See Appendix A for a copy of the planning survey and a list of participating oral historians.

We also developed three fictitious community oral history projects for use in the Toolkit. We designed them to vary in type and size to illustrate the variety of oral history options for communities. Throughout this volume, I’ll discuss how each fictitious project can most effectively use community oral history planning.

This volume is organized around the list of oral history planning steps presented in the checklist at the end of this chapter. Each step represents a piece of an oral history project structure. They are listed in a suggested order for making decisions as you move through the planning phase of your project. For example, you will find familiarizing yourselves with legal standards and ethical guidelines toward the top of the list, because this information is central to oral history methodology and provides a foundation for many of the remaining steps. You also will find a step about developing the project focus before the naming step, because giving a project a name usually follows defining what a set of interviews will be about.

This decision-making order probably will not be the order in which you actually use the planning steps, however. For example, as a planning and management guide (see also Volume 3, Managing a Community Oral History Project), we are introducing a Project Design Statement. On this form, you’ll see the project name comes first because a name, once decided on, becomes a standard identifier and, from then on, is always listed first. Continuing the example, practical application of legal standards and ethical guidelines takes place on a continuing basis, so you may find reference to this information in several places on the form, not just at the beginning. You may also find that, even though your community oral history idea may have been inspired by stories from possible interviewees, the actual planning step identifying the list of interviewees comes after you define the focus and scope, because this order for decision making reflects the reality of your project planning. As you work through the planning steps for your project, I recommend you follow the order suggested in this chapter, even though practicalities may well dictate a different order for carrying them out, once your decisions are made and you move to the project management stage.

Oral History

Everyone loves a story, and communities are full of them. How could a community resist getting together to talk about the year the river crested and nearly destroyed the neighborhood, or the time a general strike in the city had unexpected consequences in the neighborhood, or even about the Hungarian stew made each year by an elderly neighbor with a unique accent and unknown past? Stories naturally lead to the idea of interviews, and the idea of interviews leads to the idea of oral history. But there is a difference between telling stories and producing oral histories.

Oral history is more than storytelling.

What exactly is oral history? There are many definitions; the one given in the Series Introduction focuses on process. It points out that an interviewee (sometimes called a narrator)—the person whose stories and memories are recorded in an oral history interview—is someone who understands and can communicate information about their context and meaning, and that interview information should be preserved and made accessible for future users. This definition, with its reminder that oral histories are primary source documents, guides our planning discussion.

Oral History Quotes

What does oral history look or sound like? Before we go any further, let’s briefly look at excerpts from two community oral history projects. You’ll have to imagine hearing the actual voices, but the words speak volumes about the community each represents. Both are from planned projects and both continue to be actively used. They represent the types and variety of information that, through oral history, communities can document about themselves.

The Cushman Motor Works Oral History Project was conducted by plant employees in honor of the company’s centennial. Cushman Motor Works was founded to manufacture motors and engines. It now is a manufacturer of industrial vehicles and custom vehicles. This story of the foundry described the place where large quantities of metal were melted and poured by hand into molds. Mary Kay Quinlan and I provided oral history project planning guidance and interviewer training. The publication cited in the first Note at the end of this volume was a planned project product.

The Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans Oral-Visual History Project interviews were done either in spoken English or in American Sign Language (ASL) and recorded in broadcast-quality

The Cushman Motor Works Oral History Project

“The foundry was quite an interesting place. … It was real tough work. I will never forget the smell. They used to use molasses mixed with core sand to make the cores for the molds. Of course, when they poured the hot metal in, you could smell molasses. I can always remember the foundry area smelled like that. You could tell when they were pouring from the smell. … But I remember it was a dirty, hot place to work.”¹

Interview with Dick Pearce, Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, NE, 2001.

The Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans Oral-Visual History Project

LB: “I finally said I just wanted to go to the Legislature and testify. … I was really excited to testify on behalf of DBSM [DeafBlind Services of Minnesota]. … There I was at the committee hearing. I was called to testify. I got right up there. I said ‘hello’ to each one of the legislators and I said, ‘I am here to tell you the truth.’ Well, that got their attention. I explained everything – how DeafBlind people need SSP [Support Service Provider] services, just how critical it is to have SSPs for us to be able to interact fully and safely in the community. It was important for going to the store, in part to protect us from other people who maybe wanted to take advantage of us and any number of things. I can’t remember all I said. But when I was done, I thanked them all and sat back. … We got big money out of that one. Oh, man, I can’t even remember how much it was.”²

Interview with Lynette Boyer. Teika Pakalns, Interviewer. Alan Kenney, Tactile Interpreter. Patty Gordon and Cori Giles, Sign Language Interpreters. Lynette Boyer (voiced by Patty Gordon): LB. Teika Pakalns (voiced by evonne Bilotta-Burke): TP. June 8, 2011. Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans, St. Paul, MN.

video format. A master copy of each interview was maintained as recorded. For accessibility purposes, a copy of each ASL interview was translated into spoken English by certified interpreters and voiceovers were added. All interviews were also transcribed and closed captioned. This project, called an oral-visual history project to indicate its roots in the oral history process with use of a visual language as the primary interview language, provides information about deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing people and their community activism in Minnesota. The project was supported in part with funds generated for environmental and legacy projects by a clean water, land, and legacy tax in Minnesota. All materials are available through the Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans, St. Paul, MN, http://www.mncdhh.org/heritage/.

Documenting Community History Through Oral History

The Toolkit...