T.J. Gaffney's post regarding oral histories has me thinking about conducting interviews. Other than simply following the flow of conversation, what basic questions should an interview cover? I'm concerned with someday looking back thinking, "If only I had asked him/her ______". Any suggestions? Are there guidelines that preservationists or historians follow? Does anyone have personal experience the rest of us could learn from? Thanks!

71446975@quixnet.net

I've been thinking about this my self. This past summer I spent working at Cass and found my self in the middle of a place with a history dieing out. The last Generation of old timers is there and most of them talkative. But they won't be there much longer. This summer I hope to seize the opportunity. But I have no idea what I am doing, I figure I'll get some ideas when I talk it over with my boss (professional muesum guy) right now all I can figure is start the conversation with there birth and who there parents where and what they did, and let it go from there.

Any Advise though, I'd be glad to here it!

> T.J. Gaffney's post regarding oral histories
> has me thinking about conducting interviews.
> Other than simply following the flow of
> conversation, what basic questions should an
> interview cover? I'm concerned with someday
> looking back thinking, "If only I had
> asked him/her ______". Any suggestions?
> Are there guidelines that preservationists
> or historians follow? Does anyone have
> personal experience the rest of us could
> learn from? Thanks!



btrue@vt.edu

> T.J. Gaffney's post regarding oral histories
> has me thinking about conducting interviews.
> Other than simply following the flow of
> conversation, what basic questions should an
> interview cover? I'm concerned with someday
> looking back thinking, "If only I had
> asked him/her ______". Any suggestions?
> Are there guidelines that preservationists
> or historians follow? Does anyone have
> personal experience the rest of us could
> learn from? Thanks!

Excellent question. I suspect that during the initial meeting, you'll probably want to let the conversation stray where it will. This will let you get familiar with the person you are interviewing and give them a chance to do the same with you. You should ask yourself what sort of information you desire from the person. Are you interested in anecdotal information concerning the characters and personalities that this employee worked with over the years? Are you more interested in operational or equipment issues? A simple request for the person's employment history will generally start the ball rolling. Most stories start with how the person came to be employed on the railroad. I would certainly think that multiple meetings would be desirable so that you would have time to review the previous conversations and line of questioning and allow you to steer the information in the direction that you want. I know from personal experience when it comes to recalling old experiences, it is helpful to have another person there who knew the same people and may have been involved in some of the actual incidents. That might be hard to accomplish with some of the real oldtimers who are now, unfortunately, the last of their breed. If you are not really familiar with railroad slang and terminology, it might be helpful to have someone with you who can paraphrase thoughts and "translate" some of the more obscure terms and phrases. Hope this helps.
Don C.

milw261@comcast.net

I think part of the best advice I could give would be to read or watch other examples of the genre and ask for yourself what they did right and wrong. One book I have been recommending to folks new to the field and will suggest to you is "Set Up Running: The Life of a Pennsylvania Railroad Engineman, 1904-1949" by John W. Orr, published 2001 by the Penn State University Press. It's a PRR-focused book by the subject's son, so it gives brilliant examples of both what to do right and good examples of shortcomings.

My off-the-cuff recommendation would be for you to bring in a second interviewer with a totally opposite bent or mindset from you, if possible. While the railfan may be interested in what kind of engines the engineer drove, the sociology major may focus on how a disruptive family life was handled. If you're a technical academic, bring along a liberal-arts major.

Think in the broadest, most general terms. Ask him what the best time he ever had on the railroad was, and the worst. Ask what (or who) the running jokes were in his yard/shop/division. Did anyone at home, in school, or in church know what he did? How? Why? How do the young whippersnappers of today have it good? Would he let his son follow him in the trade? Why or why not?

One British oral history project I saw freely admitted that they didn't start the tapes rolling until after the second pint of ale in the pub had started to settle in. There's something to this, if the subjects aren't teetotalers--but that "something" may be uniquely European in nature. Nonetheless, worth a try.

lner4472@bcpl.net

I have done hundreds of hours of oral history interviewing of retired railroaders as part of our continuing folklife project on steam- and diesel-era railroad workers in Pennsylvania. Many good books are available on doing oral history work. Contact me offline--I have developed numerous questionaires that you might find of some use.

Kurt R. Bell
Archivist
Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

> T.J. Gaffney's post regarding oral histories
> has me thinking about conducting interviews.
> Other than simply following the flow of
> conversation, what basic questions should an
> interview cover? I'm concerned with someday
> looking back thinking, "If only I had
> asked him/her ______". Any suggestions?
> Are there guidelines that preservationists
> or historians follow? Does anyone have
> personal experience the rest of us could
> learn from? Thanks!


http://rrmuseumpa.org
c-kbell@state.pa.us

Kurt, Our museum group has also proposed doing oral histories with some of our old timers.
I suspect that there are a number of us involved with different museum groups who would be interested in your questionaires. If you wouldn't mind, you might post your favorite questionaire to the interchange or other website for all of us. That might be just the impetus to get started before we lose more of this information.
Thanks,
Doug

> I have done hundreds of hours of oral
> history interviewing of retired railroaders
> as part of our continuing folklife project
> on steam- and diesel-era railroad workers in
> Pennsylvania. Many good books are available
> on doing oral history work. Contact me
> offline--I have developed numerous
> questionaires that you might find of some
> use.

> Kurt R. Bell
> Archivist
> Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

Doug@nprymuseum.org

>Does anyone have personal experience the rest of us could learn from? Thanks!

I have done participated in designing interviews for our museum, and have also produced an anniversary video at church that is built around oral history. Some suggestions:

1. Ask the person about the stories you have already heard them tell. Most people in my experience thus far have favorie stories they tell. You know - like our parents and grandparents often do: "Back in the depression, etc."

2. Give people the questions in advance. Most people do not like to be interviewed on camera or with a tape recorder in front of them.

3. Interview in a familiar location. Someplace the person is comfortable. This could be at their home, or in front of their favorite piece of equipment a the museum, etc.

4. If you have access to family members of your inertview subject, ask them for questions. Often they have heard other stories over the years. This was helpful when we interviewed one of our members who worked at Transit Research Corporation. His son gave us questions about design of the PCC car, traveling on the 20th Century Limited, etc.

4. Two tapes I can recommend that helped me learn this art are "The Stonecutters" a documentary about the artisans at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, and "If You Knew Sousa", a PBS American Experience program about John Phillip Sousa.

We did an oral history project at National Capital Trolley Museum. Most of what we captured on tape were the familiar stories that we had heard from former DC Transit employees who were active in leadership and volunteer positions at our museum. And within two years of completing the project, three of the gentlemen had died.

Good luck!

Wesley Paulson

National Capital Trolley Museum

It helps to know pretty much what the general questions will be that you want answered - just a rough list of them is good for skilled interviewers (which I am not). If a thread starts to look pretty appealing, meander off the main course and check it out. You can always return.

Also, one on one isn'the only game in town. On rare and exceptional occasions, a small gathering will start to work off each other and hours of great stories will result with little if any disruption from the interviewer - in fact, interruption can kill this pretty fast.

There's a lot of pay dirt to be mined in this area in which we don't seem to have enough miners.

dave

Everybody here has pretty much covered everything I'd suggest. I'd especially have to agree with a couple of things:

1.) Know what information your looking for: Study your subject, and get some background ahead of time if possible. If its a engineer or fireman you are interviewing, study the locos of his road or roads and ask specifics, such as, oh, "tell me about the BL2's" or, "I hear the 1198 and 1199 had fireboxes as big as a cathedral and were hand-bombers to boot; how in the world did you keep a fire in 'em?". In this case, the more interviews you do the more specifics you can bring out.

2.) If possible, do more than one interview. As I stated, I've interviewed and re-interviewed Orv a couple of times, mostly when other interviewers brought up things that I didn't know about, or hit on a subject I haven't thought of. In this sense, I agree with Dave about groups; they can really play off each other. I will make one warning however; it can be VERY difficult to keep groups focused on a particular subject. An actual example:

Interviewer: "What was your favorite diesel to work on?"

IN 1: "Tough call, but I'd have to say the BL-2's. Had a lot of room to work on them, since they had those long hoods that bent out a bit. They were especially nice in them winters in the Thumb where the wind would blow of the lake something fierce."

IN 2: "Your crazy. I couldn't see a d*** thing when we were running those things."

IN 3: "That ain't surprising; you always were blind as a bat. Me, as long as we were facing forward that was fine. The only times we ran long-hood lead was when we were doing plow extras, which we always were after the MacGregor wreck."

IN 1: "Naw, your thinking of the Hart wreck on the other side of the state. MacGregor was where they forgot to raise the flanges and the plow cut open them 40-foots on the siding like a tin can."

IN 2: "MacGregor, now that was a wreck. Who was the engineer, you Bob?"

IN 3: "Nah, that was Ron. You know, he was from Bad Axe...."

Get the drift? We started asking about diesels and drifted into wrecks. Stuff like that can happen. Sad as this is to say, the most important part is just getting them down on tape, because the next morning you may read their name in the obituary.

Oh yeah, in case you're interested, here's a photo of the wreck at MacGregor they were talking of.

TJ

Port Huron Museum
[img]http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/imagesRRHX/Stations/PM-BL2inSnowPlowWreckMacGregorMI-c.1950[TJGaffney].jpg[/img]
tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

As important as the interview itself is post-interview processing. It's also less fun, and can be more time consuming and expensive than you might think--but it's a key part of doing a really professional job.

Ideally, your post-interview phase includes the following:

1. Creating a hard-copy, printed transcript of the interview. You can do this in house, or hire a professional transcription service at competitive rates if you have a large volume of interviews.

2. Correct the initial transcript by comparing it line by line with the audio or video tape. With technical subjects like railroading with lots of specialized work terms and jargon, you'll have a lot of work to do here if you use a volunteeer or thrid-party transcription service. You'll get some good laughs too--phonetic spellings of technical terms can be unintentionally hilarious.

3. Prepare a final transcript. At least one copy should be printed on acid-free paper and be stored as part of your permanent archives.

4. Prepare and create a glossary and finding aid. The glossary should define any specialized terms and abbreviations your interview subject used. To return to Sandy Mitchell's example, the glossary in the back of Orr's book "Set Up Running" is a workable sample.

The finding aid should list major topics and subjects covered, cross-indexed to page numbers on the final, corrected and validated transcript.

Is this all time-consuming? You bet! But its the sort of work which is ideal for college interns and dedicated volunteers, and so need not be expensive.

Most of all though, its investing in this kind of processing which makes sure the memories you capture will be around and usable for the long run. If you do this, future authors, researchers, curators and exhibit designers WILL consult your interviews, draw knowledge from them, and use them in books, exhibits and so forth.

If you do not do this, the memories you kept will remain locked on degrading and oxidizing audio tape, for which players may or may not be avialable, and anyway, since its so hard to use, and without a finding aid we don't know what's in it, why should we bother? If nobody cared enough to organize and index it how valuable can it be, right? I'm a busy guy, and I have a fixed research budget, and the museum in the other city has great archives and is so much better organized.. I'll spend my time there where I get the best bang for my research buck...

Well, you get my drift...

eledbetter@rypn.org

> As important as the interview itself is
> post-interview processing. Ideally, your post-interview phase includes the following:

> 1. Creating a hard-copy, printed transcript
> of the interview. You can do this in house,
> or hire a professional transcription service...

> 2. Correct the initial transcript by
> comparing it line by line with the audio or
> video tape. With technical subjects like
> railroading with lots of specialized work
> terms and jargon, you'll have a lot of work
> to do here if you use a volunteeer or
> thrid-party transcription service. You'll
> get some good laughs too--phonetic spellings
> of technical terms can be unintentionally
> hilarious.

This is so true. I once worked for an agency that conducted yearly railroad conferences and arranged for transcription of all sessions. The secretarial service was professional but clueless in railroad terminology.

"Pantograph and catenary" came out "Pantegrowths and grategary." My boss and I laughed over that for weeks and in a moment of whimsy, he even made up a sort of cheerleader's yell based on this sincere but silly goof.

The point is that it's important to do the line-by-line checking as soon as possible. While it's easy to let the tape sit on the shelf with the thought that someday you'll have enough time to review it, there may be little quirks and misunderstandings that pop up. If your interviewee dies in the meantime, your opportunity to clarify vanishes just as quickly.

Dan Cupper
Harrisburg, Pa.

cupper@att.net

Erik,

That was very well ut. The hardest part is getting the information down on paper!

We have way more hours of tape than we do transcripts.

We think that this subject is so important that the Karl Kortum endowment requires use of or additions to the oral history files in order to apply for the endowment grants.

Now if we can only find time and people to get the transcriptions.

Ted miles

ted_miles@nps.gov

I have to get a plug in here for my new employer, the American Association of Museums.

The November/December 2002 issue of our flagship magazine Museum News includes an 8-page cover story called "Collected Stories: The Rise of Oral History in Museum Exhibitions" by Ron Chew. It includes a lot of thought-provoking examples of ways to use oral history in designing exhibits.

A membership in AAM includes a subscription to Museum News; memberships for non-paid volunteer staff start as low as 35/year; see http://www.aam-us.org/membership.cfm

AAM membership
eledbetter@rypn.org

> I have to get a plug in here for my new
> employer, the American Association of
> Museums.

> The November/December 2002 issue of our
> flagship magazine Museum News includes an
> 8-page cover story called "Collected
> Stories: The Rise of Oral History in Museum
> Exhibitions" by Ron Chew. It includes a
> lot of thought-provoking examples of ways to
> use oral history in designing exhibits.

> A membership in AAM includes a subscription
> to Museum News; memberships for non-paid
> volunteer staff start as low as 35/year; see
> http://www.aam-us.org/membership.cfm

Congrats Erik! An excellent organization to be involved in. I, too, read the article you speak of, and found it to be quite informative.

All the comments on making sure the transcripts are made are dead on. I was forced to do so when I was doing research for my thesis, and thankfully its a habit that stuck. I haven't gotten through all of the video tapes, but I am finished with the audios.

Oh, and for the B&O museum fans; have a few tapes made of those who worked in the Newark, Ohio area for the B&O that I made over the summer of 1996. Sad to say, most are now gone. I know a gentleman who was a professor at OSU-Newark also was doing audio taping, a project I believe he started in the 1970's. His name currently escapes me, but I'll try and dig it up.

One particular individual was quite helpful in his willingness to impart his info to us. I would be more than happy to make a copy (on tape or DVD) for the B&O Museum, as well as transcribe the information.

TJG


Port Huron Museum
tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

My first Colorado job was supervising inmates in the Big House on the Prairie in transcribing miles of old cassette tape oral histories. they also listed and catalogued acres of newspaper clippings. Many read about their crimes and trials. It could be worth considering this untraditional source of folks with a lot of time on their hands.

dave