Top 6 Sites With Sample Oral History Interview Questions

A little while ago, I posted my Top 6 Online Guides for Folklife and Oral History Documentation. In preparing for a couple interviews I'm going to be doing, I was looking up some sample questions for basic oral history and folklore interviews, and so I thought I would post my top picks here for people who were looking for similar resources.

1. The Smithsonian Folklife and Oral History Interviewing Guide
http://www.folklife.si.edu/education_exhibits/resources/guide/introduction.aspx
This is sort of cheating, because I included it in my earlier post, but it still remains an excellent resource, complete with sample questions.

2. Fifty Questions for Family History Interviews
http://genealogy.about.com/cs/oralhistory/a/interview.htm
Subtitled "What to Ask the Relative" this is a good starting list for anyone doing research on family stories, genealogy, or family traditions.

3. Oral History Questions
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson805/questions.pdf
Also a good list for people doing family oral histories, this collection of questions was compiled specifically for youth researchers.

4. Sample Interview Questions For Veterans
http://www.loc.gov/vets/questions.html
Prepared by the Library of Congress for its Veterans History Project, this is a good list of questions for people doing interviews with members and former members of the armed forces during World War I, World War II, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf wars.

5. Family History Sample Outline and Questions
http://oralhistory.library.ucla.edu/familyHistory.html
This outline can be used to structure a family oral history interview and contains examples of specific questions.

6. Oral History Interview, Questions and Topics
http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/Quest.html
A list of questions that may be used when interviewing an older member of the family, prepared by the Museum of Jewish Heritage


UPDATE 19 Oct 2016 - I've added a new #6, as the Draft Oral History Interview Questions for the Fairfax County Asian American Historical Project seem to have vanished. But you can still check out their project here.

Dale Jarvis on the Voices of the Past Podcast

According to its website, "The purpose of the Voices of the Past netcast, podcast and accompanying website is to help inspire the advancement of heritage values in our society using the new form of communication called social media."

Director Jeff Guin writes: "With Voices of the Past, you will find a new type of journalism using the heritage preservation community as its focus. It retains the news gathering techniques and production values of traditional media as familiarized by six o’clock television news programs across the country. But it also integrates social media tools to help viewers understand how to communicate heritage values in the new Web 2.0 world."

This week, your friendly neighbourhood folklorist, Dale Jarvis, is the featured guest on the podcast, talking about how he uses social media for intangible culture heritage work and for storytelling.

Read the transcript at:
http://www.preservationtoday.com/2009/08/10/podcast-dale-jarvis-on-the-art-of-storytelling-on-the-world-wide-web/

or go directly to the MP3 at:
http://tinyurl.com/DaleJarvisVOP

Top 6 Online Guides for Folklife and Oral History Documentation

I've had a few requests lately for guidebooks or information on running folklore, folklife, and oral history field documentation projects. Here are my top six picks of the week:

1. FOLKLIFE AND FIELDWORK: A Layman's Introduction to Field Techniques
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/fieldwork/
Available online, broken down into chapters, or also as a full pdf you can download and print

2. Oral History Centre Tutorials
http://oralhistorycentre.ca/tutorials
A collection of informative articles and instructional tutorials containing resources such as software and hardware training, oral history guidelines and best practices.

3. Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History
http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html

4. The Smithsonian Folklife and Oral History Interviewing Guide
http://www.folklife.si.edu/education_exhibits/resources/guide/introduction.aspx
Excellent resource, complete with sample questions

5. New Zealand Guide to Recording Oral History
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/handsonhistory/oral-history

6. Style Guide for Transcribing Oral History
http://www.baylor.edu/oralhistory/index.php?id=931752

photo: Ronald White spins a yarn, Stephenville, 2016. photo by Dale Jarvis

Culture Corner - The Folklore of Harbour Breton

Mr Doug Wells, of Harbour Breton, is a board member of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. Following our board meeting last week, he sent me a series of articles on local culture.

Wells writes, "I had my students to write on local cultural and historical events, etc. With a folklore background, I also encouraged students to write articles on folklore related practices. The attached articles are folklore/folklife related and represent Harbour Breton and some nearby resettled communities. Over the years of teaching Cultural Heritage 1200, students wrote approximately 150 stories. The stories were worth so much towards the student's course evaluation. They were also submitted to our local paper as well, the Coaster. Our class's section of the paper was called Culture Corner and was quite popular with locals, especially with seniors."

With his permission, I've placed the scans of the original articles online.

From curing warts to local legends, the articles give a wonderful introduction to the local folklore of Harbour Breton and area.

Makkovik Elder "Uncle Jim" wins Rogers Arts Achievement Award

On Saturday May 2, 2009, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council (NLAC) held its 24th annual Arts Awards Show and Gala at the Reid Theatre in St. John’s. The annual Arts Awards honour the accomplishments of Newfoundland and Labrador’s artists.

NLAC Chair Camelita McGrath said, “This year’s winners represent artists who are achieving excellence in their fields both at home and away."

The winner of the Rogers Arts Achievement Award was Uncle Jim Anderson of Makkovik.

James Anderson of Makkovik has been taking pictures for over six decades. Last May an exhibition of his work, James Anderson: Over 50 Years of Taking Pictures, was presented at The Rooms Provincial Archives. It consisted of 80 large colour photographs along with numerous sound recordings of Anderson.

His photographs are a legacy of a lifestyle now gone; they capture candid moments, everyday work activities, and the special events of Makkovik. Church services, jamborees and get-togethers; buildings, industry, and the passing seasons; men and women fishing in boats, working on wharves, and riding snowmobiles.

The complete collection contains some 297 black and white photographs; 1700 slides; 75 hours of VHS cassettes, and 84 hours of 8mm and Hi8mm tape analogue recordings.

Known to many as “Uncle Jim”, he has long been a central part of life in Makkovik: as the dog-team mailman, a fisherman, the post master, an elder at the church, and a musician. For 40 years he helped his late wife Susie run a boarding house.

He was introduced to photography as a teenager, when an English missionary taught him how to develop black and white photos. He bought a Kodak Jiffy 35 mm camera from the Eaton’s catalogue and started to capture the moments he thought important. Self taught and intuitive, his use of angle, perspective, contrast, focus, composition, and framing have evolved by trial and error, experimentation, sensitivity, and perseverance.

He says he never gets tired of looking at his pictures. “They comfort me,” he says, “It’s a contribution I hope will give joy to my viewers.”

His relentless artistic drive and the resulting collection of photographs are unmatched. It’s an outstanding contribution to the cultural life of this province.

Photo of Uncle Jim getting his award here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/djangomalone/3497981710/

CBC Radio Podcast of Weekend Arts Magazine's Angela Antle introducing Uncle Jim, and his thank you speech:
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/labmorning_20090504_15094.mp3

Traditional Wooden Boats - Recording Our Heritage

The Wooden Boat Museum INVITES YOU TO HELP US preserve the traditional working boats of our Province.
LEARN A PROFESSIONAL APPROACH TO FIELD DOCUMENTATION

Our two part program includes a ONE DAY CLASSROOM INTRODUCTION to the elements of field work followed by a
series of TWO DAY PRACTICAL EXERCISES fully documenting boats at selected sites around the Province.

Traditional Small Boats
Introduction - Regional working boats to be found around the coastline of our Province.
Kevin McAleese – Curator, The Rooms

Anatomy of a Boat
Seeing wooden boat structure with a critical eye. Characteristics and craftsmanship.
Aidan Penton – Master Boatbuilder, Fogo Island

Lifting Lines
A practical guide to capturing the shape or hull form of a boat in the field
Bruce Whitelaw – Naval Architect, WBMNL

Digital Photography
A practical guide to achieving museum quality digital photographs in the field.
Jerry Pocius – Research Professor, MUN

Tape Recorded Interviews
A practical guide to successful tape recorded interviews in the field.
Dale Jarvis – Folklorist, Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador

ONE DAY
St. John’s
Saturday, May 16
8:45 AM

$35
Registration Fee
Lunch included

Location
Industrial Seminar Room
Marine Institute
155 Ridge Road

for INFORMATION contact
Bruce Whitelaw
709 722 7337
bruce.whitelaw@mi.mun.ca

or
Bev King (WBMNL)
709 583 2070
bkingheritage@gmail.com

"The first day in St. John's is an introduction to field documentation and an opportunity to begin establishing a standard for capturing data on our traditional wooden boats in an orderly way," says Beverly King of the Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador. "The hope is to encourage people from around the Province to come together for a day. Then in the weeks to come there would be a further two days in "the field" practising the skills introduced."

"The sites of these practical sessions are to be determined by the participants of day one and the identification of boats to be documented," says King. "We intend to hold about a half dozen practical sessions dotted around the Province with only a subset of those attending the introduction participating in any one practical exercise. So, everyone gets the common introduction in St. John's and then goes back home and practices (with the assistance of a number of the presenters of day one who will travel out to the sites for a couple of days)."

http://www.heritagefoundation.ca/media/2711/promo_may16.pdf

ICH Update for April 2009 - Aboriginal Cultural Heritage

This month's edition of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update focusses on the province's aboriginal cultural heritage, and provides an overview of some of the recent projects started under Newfoundland and Labrador's Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Program of the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation. Some project include canoe making, oral history training, documentation of sealing traditions, and an Innu youth banner project. Also in this issue, notes from the Federation of Newfoundland Indians on Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge, and an invitation to the 2009 Miawpukek Traditional Powwow.

Download the newsletter here.

New AFC Podcast Now Available

The American Folklife Center (AFC) launches its regular schedule of free podcasts with the first episode in the series, "Voices from the Days of Slavery: Stories, Songs, and Memories." Download the audio recording and a transcript of the program to your Ipod, other portable media player, or to your computer from the Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/podcasts/slavenarratives/index.html. You may choose to automatically download this and subsequent episodes via a free subscription from the Library's podcast website or through Apple Itunes.

This series features oral history interviews with African Americans who endured the hardships of the slave plantations and presents their first-person accounts of life during and after slavery. The series was produced by Guha Shankar and Jon Gold, AFC, and Lisa Carl, Professor, North Carolina Central University. All podcasts draw from the unique collections in the American Folklife Center Archives, one of the preeminent audio-visual repositories of national and international folklife, history and cultural expressions.

An afternoon with hookers

On Wednesday, March 11th, I spent the afternoon with 47 hookers.

“Tea… With Hookers!” was an event sponsored by the Intangible Cultural Heritage program of the Heritage Foundation of NL, which saw a room full of rug and matt hookers come together to listen to three of their own discuss the history, craft, art and changing tradition of rug hooking.

The event was held at the Red Mantle Lodge in Shoal Brook, Gros Morne National Park, and was organized by Corner Brook-based folklorist Sandra Wheeler. A seasonal Parks Canada employee in the region, Sandra is a board member of HFNL, and is currently working on a documentary film about rug hooking.

The event took the form of a staged interview, where Sandra introduced everyone, and I gave a brief overview of the province’s ICH strategy. Following that, I interviewed three women: Molly White, Rose Dewhirst and Florence Crocker. Of the three women, Florence was the one who had been involved in the tradition the longest, having grown up at a time when hooking mats was still a functional craft. Both Molly and Rose learned the art more recently, and shared their experiences about what they saw as a tradition that has undergone a fundamental change from craft that produced functional pieces of furnishing for the floor, to an art that produces objects to be viewed on the wall.

See the photos of the event on Flickr

Visit Molly White's shop in Woody Point