Here are some tips. Good luck!
An interview is not a dialogue. The whole point of the interview
is to get the narrator to tell her story. Limit your own remarks to a few
pleasantries to break the ice, then brief questions to guide her along. It
is not necessary to give her the details of your great-grandmother's trip in
a covered wagon in order to get her to tell you about her grandfather's trip
to California. Just say, "I understand your grandfather came around the
Horn to California. What did he tell you about the trip?"
Ask questions that require more of an answer than "yes"
or "no." Start with "why," "how,"
"where," "what kind of. . ." instead of "Was Henry
Miller a good boss?" ask "What did the cowhands think of Henry
Miller as a boss?"
Ask one question at a time. Sometimes interviewers ask a series of
questions all at once. Probably the narrator will answer only the first or
last one. You will catch this kind of questioning when you listen through
the tape after the session, and you can avoid it the next time.
Ask brief questions. We all know the irrepressible speech-maker
who, when questions are called for at the end of a lecture, gets up and asks
five- minute questions. It is unlikely that the narrator is so dull that it
takes more than a sentence or two for her to understand the question.
Start with questions that are not controversial; save the delicate
questions, if there are any, until you have become better acquainted. A good
place to begin is with the narrator's youth and background.
Don't let periods of silence fluster you. Give your narrator a
chance to think of what she wants to add before you hustle her along with
the next question. Relax, write a few words on your notepad. The sure sign
of a beginning interviewer is a tape where every brief pause signals the
next question
Don't worry if your questions are not as beautifully phrased as
you would like them to be for posterity. A few fumbled questions will help
put your narrator at ease as she realizes that you are not prefect and she
need not worry if she isn't either. It is not necessary to practice fumbling
a few questions; most of us are nervous enough to do that naturally.
Don't interrupt a good story because you have thought of a
question, or because your narrator is straying from the planned outline. If
the information is pertinent, let her go on, but jot down your questions on
your notepad so you will remember to ask it later.
If your narrator does stray into subjects that are not pertinent
(the most common problems are to follow some family member's children or to
get into a series of family medical problems), try to pull her back as
quickly as possible. "Before we move on, I'd like to find out how the
closing of the mine in 1935 affected your family's finances. Do you remember
that?"
It is often hard for a narrator to describe people. An easy way to
begin is to ask her to describe the person's appearance. From there, the
narrator is more likely to move into character description.
Interviewing is one time when a negative approach is more
effective than a positive one. Ask about the negative aspects of a
situation. For example, in asking about a person, do not begin with a
glowing description. "I know the mayor was a very generous and wise
person. Did you find him so?" Few narrators will quarrel with a
statement like that even though they may have found the mayor a disagreeable
person. You will get a more lively answer if you start out in the negative.
"Despite the mayor's reputation for good works, I hear he was a very
difficult man for his immediate employees to get along with." If your
narrator admired the mayor greatly, she will spring to his defense with an
apt illustration of why your statement is wrong. If she did find him hard to
get along with, your remark has given her a chance to illustrate some of the
mayor's more unpleasant characteristics.
Try to establish at every important point in the story where the
narrator was or what her role was in this event, in order to indicate how
much is eye-witness information and how much based on reports of others.
"Where were you at the time of the mine disaster?" "Did you
talk to any of the survivors later?" Work around these questions
carefully, so that you will not appear to be doubting the accuracy of the
narrator's account.
Do not challenge accounts you think might be inaccurate. Instead,
try to develop as much information as possible that can be used by later
researchers in establishing what probably happened. Your narrator may be
telling you quite accurately what she saw. As Walter Lord explained when
describing his interviews with survivors of the Titanic, "Every lady I
interviewed had left the sinking ship in the last lifeboat. As I later found
out from studying the placement of the lifeboats, no group of lifeboats was
in view of another and each lady probably was in the last lifeboat she could
see leaving the ship."
Tactfully point out to your narrator that there is a different
account of what she is describing, if there is. Start out by saying, "I
have heard . . ." or "I have read . . ." This is not to
challenge her account, but rather an opportunity for her to bring up further
evidence to refute the opposing view, or to explain how that view got
established, or to temper what she has already said. If done skillfully,
some of your best information can come from this juxtaposition of differing
accounts.
Try to avoid "off the record" information--the times
when your narrator asks you to turn off the recorder while she tells you a
good story. Ask her to let you record the whole things and promise that you
will erase that portion if she asks you to after further consideration. You
may have to erase it later, or she may not tell you the story at all, but
once you allow "off the record" stories, she may continue with
more and more, and you will end up with almost no recorded interview at all.
"Off the record" information is only useful if you yourself are
researching a subject and this is the only way you can get the information.
It has no value if your purpose is to collect information for later use by
other researchers.
Don't switch the recorder off and on. It is much better to waste a
little tape on irrelevant material than to call attention to the tape
recorder by a constant on-off operation. For this reason, I do not recommend
the stop- start switches available on some mikes. If your mike has such a
switch, tape it to the "on" position--the forget it. Of course you
can turn off the recorder if the telephone rings or if someone interrupts
your session.
Interviews usually work out better if there is no one present
except the narrator and the interviewer. Sometimes two or more narrators can
be successfully recorded, but usually each one of them would have been
better alone.
End the interview at a reasonable time. An hour and a half is
probably the maximum. First, you must protect your narrator against
over-fatigue; second, you will be tired even if she isn't. Some narrators
tell you very frankly if they are tired, or their spouses will. Otherwise,
you must plead fatigue, another appointment, or no more tape.
Don't use the interview to show off your knowledge, vocabulary,
charm, or other abilities. Good interviewers do not shine; only their
interviews do.
From Willa K. Baum, Oral History for the Local Historical Society
