An oral history is a relationship between narrator and listener. Done well, it preserves not just what someone said, but how they said it—the pauses, the laughter, the moments where language fails. It captures knowledge that written records miss: lived experience, community memory, the stories people carry but rarely write down.
The work starts long before you press record. It begins with trust, preparation, and a clear sense of why this story matters and who it’s for. The guidelines below, adapted from the Oral History Association, walk through the process from planning to ethics.
Before you interview anyone, get clear on what you’re doing and why. What will this project document—a person, a community, an event, a place? Who is the audience? How will the material be used and preserved? Check whether similar collections already exist, and consider how your project might add voices that aren’t yet heard.
Choose narrators whose experiences are relevant to your topic and who bring diverse perspectives. Before any interview, meet with them to explain the project, the process, and their rights. Be transparent about how the recording will be used, what review rights they have, and what happens to transcripts. Narrators should always know they can decline topics, pause recording, or withdraw entirely.
Do your homework. Research the topic, the community, and the relevant history so you can ask informed follow-up questions and contextualize what narrators share. Prepare an interview guide with open-ended questions and topic areas rather than a rigid script. Test your equipment, check the sound environment, and have backup plans for batteries and storage. If your project requires consent or release forms, prepare those in advance.
Start with warm-up questions—name, place of birth, early life—to help the narrator relax. Use open-ended prompts (“Can you describe…”, “What was it like when…”) rather than yes/no or leading questions. Listen actively. Follow up. Allow silences—they often lead to the most honest moments. Be sensitive to difficult topics; build trust and let the narrator set boundaries.
Narrators are not sources—they are people with agency, rights, and histories. Consider the power dynamics between interviewer and narrator. Be clear about how the interview might be used in publications, websites, or exhibitions, and make sure narrators genuinely understand and agree. Respect confidentiality: some material may need to be redacted or embargoed. And think about reciprocity—how might the narrators or their communities benefit from this work?
Ritchie, Donald A. Doing Oral History. Third edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences. 2nd edition. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2005.
Transcribing recorded interviews has always been one of the most time-consuming parts of oral history work. AI transcription tools can now produce solid first-draft transcripts in minutes rather than hours, making large collections much more manageable. The transcripts still need human review—AI gets names, places, and specialized terms wrong with some regularity—but starting from a machine-generated draft rather than a blank page saves enormous amounts of time. We can help you choose a tool and set up a workflow that fits your project. For projects with many hours of recordings, AI can also help you search across your full collection—finding every mention of a place, a person, or a theme across dozens of interviews.