Talking about traumatic memories “require[s] a high level of trust and rapport,” MarkdaSilva said, and should never be a way to open an interview. “Your subject will need to be really comfortable with the process — and with you in this process — before you ask questions like that,” she said. “They’re too personal to just launch into right away.”
Wong said that when interviewees are engaging in another activity, such as playing Mahjong, taking a walk or cooking, she’s seen “those stories kind of [come] out.”
Oral history strategies at the 1947 Partition Archive include not backing off when an interviewee reaches a difficult part of their story. “You don’t want to run away from it and stop talking about it,” Singh Bhalla said, as this can be a potentially healing process for the interviewee.
“Instead, you want to walk them through that moment towards a place of strength,” she said. “You want to focus on how they overcame that, that they’re here today, and how they rebuilt after that difficult thing happened.
“You walk through the emotions, and you come to the other side in a positive and resilient place by talking about the resilience that they demonstrated.”
If you’d like some further reading, KQED has a guide on processing the past with loved ones when discussing potentially traumatic stories.
Build trust with your subject — and don’t betray it
Give people the chance to take things off the record, MarkdaSilva said. This allows the subject to have “the final say” on what the recording will be, she said. You’ll need to follow through on your word and take the anecdote or section out of the recording.
“You have to be 100% trustworthy,” she said. “So even if they say something that’s really amazing [followed by] ‘No, no, please take that out, I don’t want my progeny to know that,’ you need to take it out.”
While MarkdaSilva acknowledged that others may disagree with this approach, she said she believes “people need to know upfront that their choices about their own personal life will be respected.”
The 1947 Partition Archive provides its interviewees with several privacy options.
“They can choose to keep their story embargoed for 50 years, 25 years,” Singh Bhalla said. “They can choose to make their story only available to research, and they can choose to make their story available only for some types of publications and so on.
“When people have that level of choice, they do trust that we’re trying to keep this in their best interest. We’re giving them agency, essentially.”
Your subject “should always have a chance to review the interview in some way,” Eardley-Pryor said. “Whether that’s listening to the audio again or seeing a transcript of what was the interview recording.”
The technical stuff: How to best record and save your tapes
How to record
The easiest way to record sound is with your smartphone’s default audio app, like the iPhone’s Voice Memo.
If you want to use a computer or buy a specific recording device, your options will range from the super simple to the very sophisticated, including:
MarkdaSilva said you also use another device as a backup, in case your primary method fails in the moment.
Where to record
“Make sure you’re in a place that’s comfortable for those who are being interviewed — their kitchen table, their living room,” MarkdaSilva said. “Tempting as it is to go to an outdoor cafe or something sort of fun like that, you don’t want ambient noise.”
Extra noise is difficult to edit out of tape, and at worst, it can obscure the subject’s words, so if you’re recording at home, make sure to keep background sounds, like the TV, off.
Transcribing the recording
You can transcribe your recording manually or use software like Otter.ai, Temi, Alice or Trint.
Transcripts can help with searchability, and can also be an opportunity for the subject to re-read the script to correct spellings and names or to retract anecdotes. If the narrator wants to add more information to the transcript, you can include it in the document, although Eardley-Pryor suggested writing it in square brackets to signify something new was included after the recording.
Saving the recording
You can save your recordings on cloud-based options like Google Cloud Storage, Apple’s iCloud, Mega, pCloud, Synology, NextCloud and Plex. Wherever you store items digitally, be sure to come up with an easy-to-follow and descriptive file-naming practice, so you can find documents after some time.
Eardley-Pryor said when starting your project, it’s important to keep in mind that websites — even storage websites and software — may not be around forever, and digital files can also be corrupted or lost over time.
“I would always, always recommend having multiple backups,” he said. “Not just in the cloud, but also having it stored on a hard drive. Or if you have a transcript, having a printed version of them.”
The Library of Congress has a thorough guide detailing the recommended digital formats in which you should save materials. You can also upload files to public sites like the Internet Archive.
Beyond family archives: How can you donate your recording?
Like the 1947 Partition Archives, there are many local and national historical societies and projects that ask people to share their memories and family stories. Local examples include the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, the Oakland Chinatown Oral History Project, the Japanese American Museum of San Jose and the Indigenize Project.
In many institutions, “it’s white men telling the stories of history,” Eardley-Pryor said. But “oral history has this incredible power of allowing people to speak for themselves, to tell their own story in their own words, and to have that be included as a part of the historical record for us to learn from and to shape our future with.”
If you are planning to record an oral history with the explicit intention to eventually donate it, you should establish this with your interviewee at the beginning of the interview and be transparent to make sure they’re comfortable with their story being shared publicly.
You, the interviewee and the organization should also establish other guidelines, Eardley-Pryor said, like:
- Do they want the interview to be “sealed” for a portion of time?
- Do they want it donated after their death?
- Who do they want to have access to the recording?
- Is it a Creative Commons agreement, where it is public and free to use? Or does the interviewee want to retain copyright of their voice, and make anybody who uses it have to get their approval for something beyond fair use?
“You have to respect their answer. You should not donate it if they don’t want it donated,” MarkdaSilva said. “But they might be very flattered. They might be super happy about it.”
