So You Want To Be An Oral Historian

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

 

The majority of the human experience will be lost to time.  The most pivotal moments in people’s lives rarely make the newspapers, let alone the history books. Once someone dies, their memories die with them, but you can do your part to preserve them through Oral History and the Holidays are the ideal time to learn how.

At its core, oral history is about capturing, preserving, and sharing the lived experiences of individuals whose stories might otherwise be lost. In the late 1800s, American anthropologists began recording Native American folklore in phonographic cylinders.  The oral history movement began in earnest in the United States in the 1930s with the Federal Writers’ Project under the New Deal. Out-of-work writers were hired by the Federal government to listen to and record the stories of everyday Americans. The Slave Narrative Collection, for example, recorded the recollections of over 2,300 formerly enslaved individuals. Many of those narratives are available online for free via the Library of Congress website and have proved vital to researchers.

The oral history movement picked up steam in the 1960s and ‘70s as recording equipment became cheaper and more portable.  Here at the Chemung County Historical Society, we began collecting oral histories on audio cassette back in the 1980s. Currently, we have over 300 oral histories on a variety of mediums including audio cassettes, VHS, and mp3s. Some of our projects include the Veterans’ Oral History Project, the Black Oral History Project, the Recollections of the 1972 Flood Project, and the COVID Memory Project. Several of these projects are still on-going if you would like to participate. Our Black Oral History Project and COVID Memory Project are available on our YouTube page. All other interviews are indexed on our website and can be listened to at our offices. 

 

Drawer one of our Oral History collection

Of course, you don’t have to be a professional historian, anthropologists, or folklorist to be an oral historian and capture the stories of your own family and community. These days, in fact, it’s easier than ever to get involved. Here are seven steps for conducting your own oral histories:

STEP 1: Selecting your equipment

Here at CCHS, we currently use a high-end Yeti microphone paired with a computer running Audacity, a free, open-source audio recording software. When I first started here, we were using a mini-DV camcorder. You can use what you have, but the easiest is probably going to be your cellphone. StoryCorps, a non-profit dedicating to preserving and sharing humanity’s stories, has a free app you can download to help you record your oral histories. All stories recorded through their app get saved to their servers. If you and your interviewees would prefer to keep the interview private, simply use the audio recording function on most smartphones. You can also conduct and record interviews on the computer via Zoom. 

Recent interviewee with our Yeti microphone

 STEP 2: Select a theme or topic

Most people have a lot of stories. To keep yourself from being overwhelmed, you’re going to want to pick one topic, theme, or subject to focus on. Some recent topics we’ve explored here at CCHS include: growing up on Elmira’s Eastside, the impact of the COVID pandemic, and the flood of 1972.

STEP 3: Obtain the consent of potential interviewee(s)

Oral history is a collaborative act. You’re going to want to make sure the participants are 100% on board with the project. Tell them exactly what you are doing and why before you start recording. Make sure they know they can stop at any time should they become upset or uncomfortable. Be sure to stop if they ask to.

STEP 4: Press record

STEP 5: The Interview

When beginning an interview, I usually do a quick introduction: my name, the date, the name of the project, and the name of the interviewee. You should do something similar.

You’re going to want to ask a mix of specific and open-ended questions. Specific questions like what high school did you go to? when did you enlist? and how long have you worked for [company]? are vital for providing context for the story the person will tell. Once you’ve established the basics, you can ask the more open-ended questions like what was high school like back then? what do you remember about the army? and what was it like working for [company]?  These more open-ended questions allow the interviewee to really share their story. From there, you can ask additional questions to follow up on or clarify things they brought up.

The last question should always be to ask if there’s anything else they’d like to say related to the topic.

Be sure to thank the interviewee for participating.

STEP 6: Save and label the recording

Back in the day, we’d literally labeled the cassette tape with the name of the interviewee and date of the recording. These days, I save the digital file with the name and date as the tittle. For example, Rachel Dworkin.12.12.2022.mp3. You’re going to want to do the same. Be sure to save it more than one place.

STEP 7: Transcribe?

Here at CCHS, we transcribe all our interviews. This involves listening to the interview and writing down literally ever single word. It is a highly labor-intensive process which we could not manage without our dedicated volunteers. A 30-minute interview can take over 4 hours to transcribe! We do this to help future researchers and people who are hard of hearing. It’s up to you whether you want to do something similar.

Now that you know how, get out there and record some history!

 

The Fierce Urgency of Now

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

By now, you may have noticed that we are living in unprecedented times. A global pandemic has killed more Americans in three months than died in the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined. That same pandemic has paralyzed our economy and caused record levels of unemployment not seen since the Great Depression. Citizens in every state in the nation, including right here in our community, are in the streets protesting the murder of Blacks by police and the president has threatened to use the military to put down those protests by force. We stand at the precipice of something. We are living history.

The mission of the Chemung County Historical Society is to collect, preserve, and share the history of our county, but history isn’t just the stuff in grandma’s attic. History is happening right now. In order to capture history in the making, we have launched the COVID Memory Project. We’re collecting oral histories, photographs, videos, diaries, and objects associated with the pandemic and protests. 

Here’s how you can get involved:

Oral Histories

So far, I have collected several oral histories including one from a high school senior and one from my religious leader. We’re hoping to get stories from health care workers, teachers, school administrators, grocery store and other essential retail workers, restaurant owners, someone working from home, someone laid off, someone who was sick, someone who lost someone, someone with small children, someone elderly, and anyone with a story to tell. If you fit into any of those categories and would like to participate, please contact me at archivist@chemungvalleymuseum.org or by phone at (607) 734-4167 ex. 207. Don’t worry about maintaining social distance. We’re set up to do interviews over Zoom or the phone. 

Patrick Hemenway, our first interviewee!

But wait, there’s more! If you’ve got a cell phone, microphone, or camcorder, you too can can be an oral historian. Interview your friends, neighbors, and relatives about their experiences. Contact me or check out StoryCorps (https://storycorps.org/participate/) for suggestions and recording apps. If you’re shy about doing interviews, we’re also looking for folks to listen to and help transcribe the ones that have already been collected. 

Photographs & Videos

In the first month of the pandemic, there were inspirational chalk drawings everywhere in my neighborhood. A man a few blocks over would practice his bagpipes in his driveway while people sat on their porches to listen. There are signs everywhere reminding people to wear masks, be hopeful, and stay strong. I’ve been going around with my camera to document it all the best I can, but I haven’t been able to catch everything. Bagpipe man, for example, keeps eluding me. 

Legion Park, Elmira Heights

We’re looking for a proactive team of historians willing to go out and take photos or videos around the community while keeping track of where and when those photos were taken. Please contact me for details and instructions if you’re interested. If you already have photographs or video footage of the things going on in your neighborhood, things you’ve been doing to stay sane, or the protests, we would love copies. 

Diaries

I’ve been keeping diaries for years, so you know I’ve been writing about what it’s like living under COVID. Come the end of the year, I will be donating a copy of my 2o20 diary to the museum and I plan on willing my entire diary collection to the museum after I die. If you too have been keeping a diary of this year’s goings on, please donate a copy. You don’t even have to make the copy yourself. Just plan on bringing your diary in during the first few weeks of 2021 and we’ll do it for free.

Objects

Do you have lawn signs, protest signs, or masks? We want them. Does your business have a special COVID menu, a reopening policy, or new employee guidelines? We’d like that too. 

Lawn sign, W. Church Street, Elmira

We’re smack in the middle of a pivotal moment in history. The staff at CCHS are doing all we can to document it, but we need your help to capture it all. I look forward to working with you. 

The Black Oral History Digitization Project

By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

Remember when I wrote about how I’d applied for a digitization grant from the South Central Regional Library Council? Well, the excited dolphin noises you might have heard emanating from the museum at the end of December were me, learning that I got the grant! Let me tell you a little about the project so you can be this excited too.

From 1989 to 1991, the CCHS collected oral histories from twenty-five leaders within our local Black community. Interviewees included trailblazers, community organizers, and religious leaders like Rev. Leo Hughey Jr., Nellie Jennings, Wilbur Reid, Bessie Berry, Donald Botsford, Charles Bright, and others. Over half of the participants are now dead. In some cases, these tapes are the only recordings of these people that exist. Some of the topics covered in the interviews include the civil rights movement, the Neighborhood House, EOP, NAACP, A.M.E. Zion Church, Glove House, and the personal histories of the participants. The stories captured in these oral histories are invaluable. 

Participant Delmar Rouse at his place of work, 1989

 

Unfortunately, the audio cassettes on which the interviews were recorded are inherently unstable. Each time an audio cassette is played, there is a risk it may get damaged. As anyone who remembers destroying their favorite tape can attest, audio cassettes can unspool, tear, or become demagnetized.  While digitization is not technically a preservation tool, it does allow users to listen to the recording without risking damaging it. 

Two of the 29 cassettes we'll be digitizing

Later this week, I will be sending off the tapes to a vendor in Maryland. There, the vendor will stabilize and repair the original tapes and then digitize them. He will create a 24-bit 96kHz PCM archival WAV file of each recording along with a 128kbps 44.1kHZ MP3 use file. Why the two file formats? WAV is a much more stable audio format, but it is also incredibly large and unwieldy for things like CDs, while MP3 can be played and shared easily. 

Part of the grant requires that we share the digitized recordings on the New York Heritage website. Since I don’t know how to do that, I’ll be taking some training classes on sharing audio files. We’re also working on plans with the local chapter of the NAACP to hold at least one public listening event where we’ll share and discuss the recordings. I will be posting updates as the process goes along so stay tuned.

Tell Me a Story

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

We tend to think of history as being paper-based, but some of the most interesting stories never make it onto the page. Newspaper accounts can’t tell us what it felt like to grow up in the Great Depression or deal with prejudice or fight in a war. A photograph can’t capture all the work and planning which went in to organizing the annual Iszard’s Holiday Parade. Only a conversation can. When it comes to understanding the lived experience of everyday people, oral histories are an invaluable tool.  

 

On September 6^th and 7^th, we held a story collection event at EOP. I spoke to five community members about what it was like growing up on Elmira’s Eastside. We also scanned photographs which other community members had brought in. Our plan is to not only use the stories and images in our up-coming exhibit on the Eastside, but also to share them as part of an on-line digital collection. If you, or anyone you known, has images or stories that they’d like to share for either part of the Eastside project, please contact me at (607) 734-4167 ex. 207.

Edna Mae Taylor, Woodrow Aikens, and Boyd Lee Taylor by the old EFA, 1950. Image courtesy of Edna Mae Taylor.

 

The Chemung County Historical Society recently joined the South Central Regional Library Council and I am super excited about it. SCRLC has all sorts of resources for digitizing collections including training, grants, and equipment. Members can share their digital collections via the New York Heritage website for researchers and educators to use. We already have three collections up on the website thanks to past collaborations with the Steele Memorial Library and the Corning Museum of Glass, but I hope to add more. This autumn, I plan to apply for a grant to digitize and post our oral history collection to New York Heritage so we can better share it with the world.

We currently have over 100 oral history recordings in various formats including audio cassette, VHS, and digital recordings. Topics include, among other things, the history of the local African-American and Asian-American communities; veterans’ experiences in the military; the flood of 1972; and the role Chemung County played in the 1969 moon landings. As I mentioned in an earlier post, in-house digitization of recorded media isn’t too expensive provided you have the right play-back equipment, but it is time consuming. A grant would allow us to digitize everything in one fell swoop without tying up computers or staff. We also have some born-digital material I hope to post in the coming months, whether or not we get the grant. 

Portion of our oral history collection

I once interviewed a woman who was convinced her story wasn’t worth capturing because it had just been her, living her life. That, I explained, was exactly what made it so valuable. I wanted her story of working in a local department store. I want your story of being a student or an activist or a housewife or whatever you are. I want your story because it is unique and valuable and fills in the history of our county. If you want to share it, I want to hear it. Call me. I’m ready to listen.