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A few years ago I got a call from the president of a local historical society. He asked me to meet with him to discuss the future of his organization’s oral history project.We met at his institution ’s offices, where I was invited to look over the project materials.The project,which had begun three years earlier,was an open-ended effort to interview elderly longtime residents about their memories of the community.There was a box containing approximately forty-five audiocassette tapes, some of which were unlabeled and lying loose.The organization’s president explained that after a few selected old-timers had been interviewed by historical society volunteers, the project had attracted hundreds of people interested in being interviewed. A list of interviewees was compiled, and volunteers were invited to borrow the tape recorder and a blank tape from the society’s office and instructed to contact and interview interviewees from the list.After a few years, the volunteers had lost interest, and the project had dragged to a halt. Most of the prospective interviewees on the list had never been contacted or interviewed.There were no files relating to the project, no signed releases, and no transcribed interviews.The historical  ChapterTwo Planning an Oral History Project By Stephen H. Paschen F society board was planning to officially terminate conducting interviews and to craft the collected interviews into a community history book. Too many oral history projects begin with good intentions only to lose momentum and become collections of undocumented cassette tapes relegated to storage in shoe boxes somewhere in the office closets of local historical societies or museums. Something goes wrong between project start-up and final disposition of the recordings and accompanying materials. This happens for a variety of reasons but often can be attributed to poorly focused topics and lack of proper planning and systematic implementation. Oral history projects take many forms,such as research projects by doctoral students, community projects by historical societies , or interviews of presidential administration staffers. Projects may be driven by the impetus to gather raw data for documentaries, books, exhibits, and other products. But regardless of the scope or intended product, careful planning increases the likelihood of success. Most projects begin with an idea or topic, but a poorly conceived topic can prove fatal to the success of the project right from the beginning.    A few fundamental questions any oral historian must ask before investing time and effort in an oral history project should include: What information about a topic or person will oral history interviews provide? Why do you want to do oral history ? Why is it important to do oral history? Oral history provides sources beyond the traditional kinds of information found in books, articles, and primary sources. It illuminates environments, perceptions, and feelings of individuals able to paint verbal pictures of all sorts of experiences such as workplace conditions, aspects of institutional living or foster care, and leisure activities. By focusing each topic through research Planning an Oral History Project F  and discussion with interested professionals and volunteers, I have found that I can do a more effective job setting up a successful project. Distinctive experiences of particular individuals or groups can be sampled through selection of interviewees sharing ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, family and extended family, and neighborhood experiences. Oral history holds the promise of providing color to fill the outlines of shared life experiences. But taking the time to study the intended topic will help to guide the project at the very beginning. While still in the early stages of planning a project, it is wise to engage humanities scholars in the topic discussion. Finding scholars who are interested in your topic can be difficult, especially if there is no nearby college or university.Your state’s humanities council or the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) can provide the contact information for humanities scholars in your region. Funding institutions such as the Ohio Humanities Council (OHC) or the NEH also usually employ program officers who are willing to discuss project ideas and give advice to make a project more desirable to grant review committees. Regardless of the scope of a project, an effective early step is to form an advisory committee to discuss the topic,assist with project planning, and monitor progress throughout the life of the project. Committee members may be chosen for their expertise in the particular topic, technical knowledge, and planning skills, or they may be representative of the...

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