Work Group 4 - Oral History

Work Group 4 - Oral History
Work Group Members: Ronald Blue, Jonathan Bonk (facilitator), Sherry Sherrod DuPree, Paul Ericksen, David Roebuck, John Sinclair, Norman Thomas

The mandate for the work group on oral history was two-fold: (1) to foster wide-ranging discussion of the subject, drawing on the different viewpoints and experiences of its members; (2) to consider and recommend practical action steps.

To that end, we explored answers to a series of questions:

1. Why is oral history important?

IBMR

2. From an archivist's perspective:

a. What are oral history's unique strengths?

What are oral history's limitations?

i. Bad for dates, statistics, financial information, the big picture

3. What kinds of interviews are conceivable?

Praying for Sheetrock

i.	Solo	Group
ii.	Recorded	Unrecorded
iii.	Structured	Unstructured free flow
iv.	Audio	Video
v.	Transcribed	Non-trnascribed

4. What kinds of interviews deserve priority?

5. What topics and themes in mission history should/could be documented in oral interviews?

6. Essentials for a good interview

7. Relative advantages and disadvantages of taped versus transcribed or merely recalled interviews:

Tape/Video	Transcribed
-time consuming to access	-immediate
-intimidating	-easily accessible
-multi-layered (tone, emotion)	-flat
-complete	-partial

8. Practical considerations

9. Action Steps for Mission Archives

Why bother with the interview?

Who should be interviewed?

What is the interview for?

How is the interview conducted?

Return to Resources for Evangelical Mission Archives

Last Revised: 12/07/01
Last Revised: 1/5/05
Expiration: indefinite

Work Group 4 - Oral History

© Wheaton College 2005