If you will, uh, find your seats, I think we will proceed.
0: Yes it is.
[inaudible]
2: the session is entitled oral history in the classroom and I went back to some of
the
blame for having planned it but quite unintentionally,
I'm on the wrong side of the podium here.
I told Louie that I was teaching for the first time he's seminar in the oral
history techniques and I needed some help from others who had done this or
and uh, so I'm chairman
and I have a hunch that those of us at this end of the room will depend more on
all of you. Many of you,
I'm sure I've had experience that would be very helpful to,
let me just outline by way of introduction.
What I have tried to do as a neophyte teaching oral history,
I should explain. I have only five students, two of them graduate students.
The other two of the others are senior history majors and I have actually the
piston, there's an auditor,
an English professor at a neighboring college I teach at the University of
Vermont who teaches English at Trinity college in Burlington.
And we started out the seminar by discussing how historians use conventional
sources, newspapers, diaries, correspondence, government reports,
so forth.
And from that we moved to the subject of evidence from memory as I put it,
that is reading memoirs, recollections,
evaluating them for their reliability,
how historians have dealt with people who have written memoirs, black in them,
have misstated or misinterpreted the events they were part of and so forth.
Some of you might know Dorothy Bortz cook in the far East crisis,
1933 to 1937.
And when she discusses the response to FDR is quarantined speech in October,
1937 and she points out how six or seven of the Roosevelt memoirs, uh,
made the point that you all know that,
that FDR was horrified by the response against his speech and,
uh, retracted somewhat from urging this nation to take a more internationalist
position. Well then she points out how the memoirs were wrong.
If you look at the newspapers reporting Roosevelt's speech,
you find very few actually were critical of it and a great many were in favor of
it. So how could all these people be wrong?
That's the type of problem that I put in front of my students are our reading.
We've read obvious books like solid venison's, recent biography,
uh, Dean Albertson spoken, Claude Wicker, Felix Frankfurter, rum, and this is,
we've read some of Oscar Louis's stuff, the Paris review essays.
We've had a long section on mr Manchester's book and the controversy pertaining
to it, the hazards of writing,
recent history I put in front of these students by having them read such things
as John Hershey's reason's book, the Algiers motel incident.
They all read them at Hughes or deal by power and then some of the critical
commentary written about that book.
Richard Roberto's piece in the new Yorker for example,
and one that Malcolm moose did and political science quarterly with you as the
proceedings of the oral history colloquia.
They've provided the various and scattered literature about oral history in all
its phases that I've been able to get to them. Also,
surprisingly in Burlington,
there are great many local resources I've been able to call upon. For example,
I had one of my students read Rosenman working with Roosevelt and Sam hand,
my colleague is writing a biography of Rosenman so I can bring Sam across the
hall about three steps and have him sit down and discuss the question of how
much reliability lies in Roosevelt's memoirs.
Dr. Paul French is a college of medicine at the University of Vermont,
is doing some oral history interviewing.
He's done about six interviews so far in history of that college and I had him
come in two days after the election in November.
We had three newspaper reporters who covered the 1968 campaign in Vermont and
also went to both national political conventions,
discuss how reliable and accurate they felt their reporting was.
This is something we've done twice now.
We did it in 1966 after those elections and again this year and it's a very
interesting, entertaining and informative session.
Next Tuesday when I go back,
my students are dividing into teams and our guests on Tuesday afternoon will be
the first assistant to our retiring governor,
bill a who was the first Democrat in over a hundred years to be elected in the
state of Vermont. Thank you very much.
First elected in 62 and then again in 64 and 66, uh,
two of my students will interview mr Ben Collins is his first assistant.
I'll run the tape recorder.
I haven't burden them with the physical superintending of the interview and they
are going through this past week. The ordeal is trying to prepare for this.
What questions do you ask and so forth. The following week,
the person who pretty much put together Vermont's response to the current or
report will come in to be interviewed in similar circumstances. Uh,
our governor coming back from the governor's conference in Cincinnati reds,
the current report, and since we have a Negro population in our state,
I think the total is about 500 people. Is that right Sam?
Say to blinders 20,000. Uh, you felt a craft or something? We could do.
And he and Meryl Lindsay got together to bring some black children up,
some New York into Vermont for the summer.
The point being not so much to help the black kids, that's important,
but to educate the white Vermonters about the dementia national problem.
Very controversial program. I might add,
read it with a great deal of criticism from more conservative quarters, but uh,
whether or not this program continues and so forth, that open question,
the person who ran the program will come in and be interviewed on that.
The reason I know in the interview is in classes that we don't have sufficient
equipment to turn the students loose with tape recorders to wander around
Burlington or the state of Vermont or elsewhere.
And also I've had a feeling since I've cooled my heels so many times and so many
oral history situations, uh,
waiting for the person to agree to do the interview and 60,
90 minutes going by while you're waiting in the outer office. Uh,
I thought it'd be unfair behalf to turn some of these kids loose on people they
might like to do and people who should be interviewed.
It's like signing a paper to a student when there's nothing in the library on
the subject you assigned the paper about.
So I'm having like people come in to class and being interviewed in somewhat
phony circumstances, but I think for last one purposes nonetheless valid.
I might mention too that I did an interview a week ago yesterday and today two
sessions in Auburn, New York,
the first interview of a new project I'm concerned with and I brought that in
and last Tuesday and played parts of it for my students,
trying to explain the circumstances that brought me there and why I was asking
certain questions and so forth. And I think that was quite valuable.
I might say it's, some of the students are really turned on by oral history,
but one is definitely turned off and can't wait until the course is over.
I can't wait until the course is over. So
she just doesn't believe that what most of us believe in is actually a
practicality that you can get people to sit down and talk candidly about matters
of historical importance.
Let me just string one more remark on this theme and then I'll call upon the two
panelists here to kick around these ideas. Uh,
I got very interested when I got there,
Vermont with our efforts to improve the teaching of history in our schools all
the way from primary school where my kids are through to graduate students in
college. Uh,
I think our teaching is so bad that they had father's day on Lincoln's birthday
in my hometown.
I went down to first grade to visit my son's class teacher was reading them a
story about Abraham Lincoln and she had them all gathers enough to semicircle.
So I joined the circle and the teacher said,
mr Lincoln was president during the war when the man wrote the star Spangled
banner,
primarily concerns that his,
that there is a move of foot that I support very much to get students away from
textbooks and reading various documents and other materials,
many of which, uh, conflict with each other and students. Therefore,
it is for us to interpret evidence that doesn't fit together very nicely.
That's not digested for him already as is the case in so many textbooks
incessantly have oral history interviews,
which are documents that are [inaudible] and we often have people offering
conflicting testimony and since there's a certain vividness in oral history
tapes,
I wonder if a oral history as a classroom tool is not a workable idea.
For example, I'd like to have two people in Burlington, Vermont,
one talk five or 10 minutes on a tape about all the wonderful things the new
deal did for Burlington and then someone else come on,
all the terrible things to do, deal did Burlington and use this.
Perhaps the thing I lecture in the U S survey course on what the new deal was
all about and why people got very emotional,
either supporting it or criticizing it and perhaps there are other ways in which
this could be used.
I simply mentioned this as a second minor theme of how world history might be
used in the classroom.
The first major theme of this discussion would be how do you teach oral history
if indeed you can't teach it,
and I'm sure others are doing what I'm trying to do now.
We know that Jim has been involved and make,
has been involved in the library oral history Institute at UCLA last summer who
had Coleman that's taught oral history of Cooperstown.
I think all of us have been involved in the business of trying to train people
to go out and do interviews, so in a larger context,
3: I think you can see how the classroom situation fits into the general training
of oral history interviewers. I'll ask Saul to speak for a while and then Jim,
and then we'll throw it open for general discussion.
If you can't hear us do the appropriate signals in the rare and also when it
come time to ask questions.
If you would stand and identify yourself before you ask the question and also
identify the person to whom you are addressing question.
I really don't know how to begin because I was asked to talk about oral history
in the classroom once that precisely meant I didn't know and speaking to Charlie
yesterday hurriedly didn't inform me further as speaking to Jim,
what's no help.
So in a sense I come to you, I'm prepared,
but I'd like to tell you of some of my experiences and some of the experiences
of friends of mine and perhaps to use those stuff hung the line.
What I couldn't see oral history to be and how it should be used and what
direction it should go.
I think a lot of us looking at oral history tend to be mesmerized by the
technology and tend to date the beginnings of oral history from that technology
or even going back a step further and time
to my very wonderful precept there,
professor Allan Nevins and giving him credit for the oral history idea.
I'd like to suggest that these are one of the roots of oral history that is our
most recent roots, the root of Nevins,
the root of the development of a new technology,
but the older roots and now are deeper roots to oral history,
which has significance was those of us who would take oral history and to the
classroom.
I would like to suggest that one of the oldest components of oral history is
autobiography and that has been going on for a very,
very long time.
Going back to Greek and Roman times,
it's Renaissance as an art form during the Renaissance period.
It's frozen the development during the enlightenment as one of the vehicles for
finding the development of the human mind and deed.
You might say that Herta and Gerta had projected oral history programs in 1790
to illustrate by human autobiography the development and unfolding of the human
mind. Now this certainly is one of the roots,
another of course on the contributions that have been made by other social
science disciplines other than history,
and I would like to bring to your attention,
particularly the role of the anthropologist and the anthropologist has been
doing oral history for a very, very long time.
And I think one of the most charming descriptions of oral history is by George
Bird Grinnell and the introduction to his pony folktales where he speaks of
going to see Eagle chief who is chief of the ponies at that time in 1888 and
suggesting what amounted to an oral history program to get at the
memories of people who had no written literature and the chief saw the validity
of the program and invited Grinnell to collect the folk tales.
I might point out that people,
psychologists working in the history of psychology have collected the
autobiographies,
I'll psychologist to demonstrate the development of that new field in 1930 call
merchants and published three volumes called a history of psychology and
autobiography.
And indeed this is still been going on because only last year another volume was
added to that distinguished a number of volumes.
And I might say that during the thirties and twenties,
the distinguished medical historian Henry cigarettes collected the
autobiographies and physicians in order to demonstrate the evolution of medical
practice and medical thought.
Now this is certainly another of the roots and I might say that just before
Allan Nevins growing out of new deal activity,
we had an extraordinary number of oral history programs under the uh,
uh, WPA project.
And for the older absolves in this room,
I would just choose to remind you of the collections that Ben Botkin did of the
reminiscences of old slaves.
There are literally hundreds of feet of these interviews and the library of
Congress and in a shortened version there is the uh,
beautiful book that the University of Chicago press brought out called lay my
burden down.
I might say one of the great histories of the Negro in Virginia grew out of an
oral history project in 1940 which is entirely based on oral history interviews
called the Negro in Virginia by Jackson who was a newspaper man,
not a historian. Now,
the reason I mentioned this is to indicate that there is an extraordinary
literature that can be used in the classroom for purposes of instruction,
not only the Murchison volume,
not only the Botkin volume,
but volumes that deal with the theoretical problems that we as historians have
to face. For example,
one of the most distinguished volumes that I know dealing with the problem of
use of autobiography in history is by me German historian,
Georg mish
called a lot of biography in history and that is published in two volumes.
Originally it was published in England but has since been republished by the
Harvard university press.
I might also point out that one of the both significant discussions in recent
years about the problems of the validity of oral data was published by a young,
I was going to say Dutch,
but he's Belgian anthropologist who works at the University of Wisconsin named
Jen Vansina
called the oral tradition and history.
I don't know whether that's come out and uh,
an American edition. I have an English edition that was published by
Keegan Paul Routledge. Now in a sense,
if you go to the classroom,
you have a literature which you can bring with you for training purposes outside
of the literature that you would depend on as historians dealing with particular
problems.
Now let's go to the classroom and tell you how I conceive a project,
how it works out and on what levels a project can work out.
Let me say, to begin with that,
I do not believe in training oral historians.
I believe in the training of historians using oral history techniques,
and this is quite a different kettle. Oh fish.
I believe that oral history has much to give to the training of historians and I
would suggest that one of its contribution,
one of the great contributions to oral that oral history can make is in the
training of historians because in a sense by the use of the tape recorder you
will have made of recent history a laboratory,
a place where you can examine recent history,
a place which brings in conjunction the primary documentary material which you
seek out before you went to view the secondary material that you seek out before
you went interview view,
the living memory of the person who helps interpret and gives the first ordering
with the help of the historian and first reduction with the help of the
historian of this large mass of, of data.
And it also gives an opportunity as I will point out by some of the new
activities of the American Institute of physics,
of testing and developing materials for future interviews.
Now,
one of the ways that oral history can be used on a graduate level is to
establish seminars
around particular topics and I would suggest that these seminars be small
seminars
and the virtue of this is that you get seven or eight young graduate students
who immediately immersed themselves in a secondary material since they're
dealing with the same overall problem that is universal to them all.
And then this material becomes differentiated by the primary materials that they
have to seek out in doing the interviews of particular people.
And so the detail that modifies and qualifies broad tendencies and development
and has free on not only brought out but they also shared.
In addition, I think one of the functions of oral history,
which is sometimes overlook,
is that it can be used in an extraordinary way to enhance the libraries,
all various institutions that historians are attached to and other words the
oral historian also has, if you will,
an archival function of gathering materials prior to making his oral history
interview. And by the way,
helping to order these materials to make inventories of them may cause.
I think the memoir is enhanced when it is put in conjunction with the primary
and secondary material.
Now the way of working this out is extremely tricky
on a graduate level.
I think it is important for the instructor of the seminar to do an oral history
interview first and for this he needs the permission of the person who he's
interviewing. In other words,
the person who he's interviewing has to be told that he is a Guinea pig in a
teaching situation,
just as a patient has to be told that he will be demonstrated in the hospital at
a given clinic before young interns and residents who are learning that craft.
I think you can get such permission.
I know I have been successful in getting such permission.
I know that Charles Weiner of the American Institute of physics has been
successful and getting such permission and what you do and the seminar hour is
essentially from time to time to put up the hour of interview that you have done
to make the students aware of the primary and secondary material that you have
used and then to put yourself up as a target and to have them say why on the
basis of this material did you develop these questions?
Because one of the most important things in oral history or indeed in any other
history,
is formulating the valid historical question,
the valid historical problem instead of question to be pursued,
and this indeed is a very difficult and extraordinary task and I don't want to
minimize the difficulties of this task.
Now, once you have done that, and this goes on,
say for a six month period,
then you can send your students out to perform their own memoirs.
One of the validity of this is not only that they will have to do the research,
the gathering, the interviewing,
but also most important the editing.
I think one of the things that young historians have to learn is that their
material somehow or other has to be conveyed.
It has to be read.
It has to be in a readable and understandable form and so I have grave doubts
when people speak to me broadly of raw materials.
I cringe when raw materials I mentioned.
Now,
frequently we have been content as oral historians to consider our job done when
all material is gathered,
edited and put to the archives to sleep and dr Weiner of the American Institute
of physics has instituted an innovation,
I think that bad's following.
He's been able to do this mostly because he's been funded by the national
science foundation who supports his project.
After an interview is done,
dr Weiner will ask the narrator,
and I like that term better than interviewee.
We'll ask the narrator to present what the Germans would crawl an it public of
his material,
give an hour's talk about his career or problems and his career to an audience
of his peers and why in his case,
if wingnut, for example, has given an oral history interview,
and I use this only as example,
wingnut will then appear before a conference,
all of his peers and there will be a discussion all his paper and then the
audience will begin to question Wegner about his assertions about the
development,
say in quantum physics about the developments in mathematics and so on.
And what happens in the course of of this kind of exchange are a whole series of
new critical problems that the oral historian can take for the development of
his next interview.
It's another aspect of a schooling process that could be used in the training of
your oral historian. Now finally,
I'd like to tell you of a program that I've recently become involved in and
which oral history is used on a secondary school level and for a purpose of
educating dropouts who want to go to college.
There is a Queens college federally funded a program called seek,
which is run by a retired probation officer named Joe Mulholland
and Joe Mulholland deals with children of the ghetto,
Puerto Rican children, white children,
black children who have dropped out of high school and who now at age 18 to 24
think they want a college education and somehow or other they have to be
prepared to be accepted into college.
And I persuaded Joe Mulholland to use oral history for the training
off his young dropouts.
And the training program is quite simple.
One of the problems that Mulholland has is that his students don't like to read.
No one has sufficiently motivated them to read.
They have excellent vocabulary,
but these vocabularies are essentially oral.
They are not visual so they can be highly articulate,
used I first rate vocabulary and yet if presented with this vocabulary in a
printed way, they do not recognize it.
It is difficult for them and they don't have any desire to sit down and learn
how to read.
And it was my belief that oral history could furnish such motivation and more
over be helpful to them.
And training them not to be historians,
but to learn what history was about,
to teach them that there was such things as primary and secondary data to teach
them that they in fact could create history and that there was history worth
capturing in their daily lives.
And so we've organized the program on a very simple level that kids who live in
Jamaica tried to get at the history of that block.
There is a general secondary training that they get in urban history and Negro
history,
but some of the training that they get is highly unorthodox.
They are taken, for example,
down to the County clerk's office and shown election records,
shown wills showing land records,
showing mortgage records and so on. And to tell them,
for example,
if they wanted to find out how someone on that block had registered,
whether for the democratic party or the Republican party,
it wouldn't be in the election record.
And here was in fact a way for them to formulate questions when they came to
examine the lives of perhaps their mothers and fathers,
the one next door neighbors and they have begun to use these records.
And just last week someone came and said,
he's talking to a guy who works in the printing industry and he doesn't know
what he does in his shop.
Where could he find out something about the printing industry in New York?
Well,
the first thing I'd recommended was utterly impossible for him.
It was a study by Baker, a history of the printing industry,
and they just couldn't read it,
but there was siphon broke cures that had been produced by the paper
manufacturers,
by some stereotyping firms,
not loose within his competence. And then he went down to the,
to the New York times to see how the composite and groom work.
And so he began to pick up materials for the development of an autobiography of
a fellow who lived next door, who happened to be a printer.
Now the autobiography as it ends up may be worth zero,
but that isn't the purpose.
The purpose is to teach these kids something of the materials that exist in
history,
how to be critical of primary and secondary materials and to demonstrate to them
that they have a possibility of creating something.
The results of this project won't begin for some time,
but because I'm eternally optimistic, I say it looks promising.
0: [inaudible]
3: thank you. So I must say, whenever I see Saul on the oral history, I never cease
2: to be impressed by his best sum of knowledge and insights is helpful commentary.
Uh, you mentioned a Grinnell, G, R I. N N E L L.
you did the book on funny folk tales, is that right?
Oh yes or no. And the other name was
[inaudible] and the other is called
Murchison Oliver. K a with a C
emergencies stuff. C. H. I. S.
and who is this doctor Sedaris that did the medical, uh, SIG E R. I. S.
[inaudible] Henry Henry.
And since you're on that, could we ask the date of publication those events?
SEMA broker. The other book was published, Rose, uh,
1968. So [inaudible] Oh,
it's available. Any other questions on the movie or graphics?
All items before we drop it?
I thought they might be as interesting to you as they are to me.
And I must confess, I haven't heard of somebody who get
eight. It all. Could you repeat the title of events in the book?
It's called the oral tradition in history. And that's relatively recent.
Is that wrong? You took 1916.
You all know Jim makes,
so I don't have to introduce him and we'll ask him now to get his commentary on
this matter of oral history in the classroom.
4: Well, whether to proceed or fall or
professor. A good question. Uh,
and uh, I could say all that. I'm sorry I was no Hill,
but I wasn't enlightened either to what this section would be all about.
I know that, uh,
I was asked to come and talk to you briefly.
I hope about the Institute on oral history.
We had out on the West coast in the summer. Uh,
I thought after I left Darden house that, uh,
my problems were over our office struggling with the
association with getting it underway with a little louder. Oh,
I'm sorry. With holding the, uh, first,
the actual glocally mano oral history. And we hope that when,
uh, we got back to Martin house last year,
we would be able to get down or get back down to the business as the office that
I know is Louis is looking forward now getting back to doing normal history at
Columbia.
But I was not in the office more than one day.
Then the first life member of our association dropped by that professor Raymond
Wood of the UCLA school of library service. Tell me that, uh,
uh,
the Dean of the library school had appointed him to coordinate a number of
institutes which the library school wanted to offer on the UCLA campus and that,
uh,
we would be applying for a federal grant from the U S office of education,
uh, to fund these institutes.
And the two institutes which were proposed were an Institute in map
librarianship and an Institute in oral history, library and ship.
Now they had to be called librarianship institutes because they were being
funded by the library training sections of the U S office of education.
Uh, I would've preferred simply oral history Institute.
At any rate, we went to work on a proposal
and what we proposed to do was to bring to UCLA about 20 participants to spend a
period of two weeks on intense training in oral history.
Now it's a good question as to whether or less you really can be taught.
I think professor Benson has raised an excellent point. Uh,
I was rather skeptical myself, frankly,
as to whether we would be able to accomplish.
And then we see in the newsletter that it's termed is success. Well,
there were problems and I'll try to tell you what some of them were. Uh,
we did submit a proposal and we said that the major objective of the Institute
was to provide intensive,
practical training in the techniques of oral history for qualified individuals
in the process of organizing or about to organize an oral history program in a
library or archive situation.
We had approximately 46 applications
out of a mailing list of 2300 individuals,
or rather, excuse me, institutions in the United States, libraries and archives,
uh, taken from various directories, uh,
which we felt might be interested in sending applicants or representatives to
this Institute. Uh,
of the 46 then we chose 20.
These individuals with few exceptions had not only a library degree of
professional library degree in library training,
but in addition to that graduate training, um,
of the masters or the doctor's level in various subject areas.
And I think we were quite fortunate in the caliber of people that we were able
to attract. In fact, our administration, uh,
in the library, uh,
complimented on the caliber of people that we had.
And this was really a delight to have these people here and to be with them for
this period of training. Uh,
the proposal that we submitted, uh,
combined both theory and practice.
We kicked off
is on the first week in the beginning with an orientation lecture,
which was centered around the question of oral history programs in library
situations and attempted to answer or at least to point out some of the problems
that, uh,
might be encountered by basing in the oral history program in a library.
Now, uh, whether we like it or not,
whether we think that an oral history program ought to be in the history
department or whether we think it ought to be an independent operation.
Libraries are starting oral history program and therefore the library profession
feels, and I know that, uh, the Dean of our own library school fields,
that somehow the, uh,
teaching arm of our profession has to make some response to this demand.
Now,
what are these programs that are being started will continue and grow strong
courses? The question at this time that we can't answer, uh,
his oral history is simply a bad pass. Uh,
everybody's getting on the bandwagon now. What will it be like 10, 15,
20 years from now? It's hard to say.
I hope it will continue to flourish and I hope that library will continue to
assume the responsibility.
We tried to point out to the people that in the library through the acquisition
process, if oral history materials were created,
that this provide a means for the acquisitions librarian to play a creative role
in the acquisition process rather than simply a role of acquiring books.
Uh,
an acquisition library might be called upon to run an oral history program with
the objective in mind of acquiring oral history materials as well as manuscript
collection or, uh, graduate research by faculty,
graduate students. And so on. After,
uh, this introductory session,
the students were introduced to a intensive,
uh,
discussion lecture discussion on the history of the library of the University of
Los Angeles.
And this was done in the evening of the first day,
um, in the afternoon of the first day,
they were introduced to the equipment that they would use for the Institute.
We leased 20 tape recorders, uh,
with transcription, uh, attachments. And, uh,
we spent the afternoon familiarizing students with the use of their equipment
following the evening lecture.
The next morning the participants were to turn loose into the university
archives.
We had brought all of the material records and so on covering the history of our
institution, uh,
from its present form beginning of 1923.
The library dates back actually to 1883 but the records themselves,
uh, cover the period from 1923 approximately, uh,
to the present.
And these records were brought from the university archives and place in one
room and the students were turned loose in there with uh,
material which had been prepared in advance for them.
Let me explain now what we did in advance of the students coming so that we can
go on from this point. First of all,
we had sent to each of the students the proceedings of the first and the second
national colloquium and the bibliography of oral history articles would start,
uh, articles in the margin.
These were sent at least three months in advance and the participants were worn
that they would have to study this material very carefully because of the time
at the Institute would not permit this.
Then we selected for each of the 20 participants,
an individual,
a professional librarian in the library who had spent a long period of time
there. Uh,
these were mainly department head administrators and
each one of the participants received an assignment sheet,
which they were given the appropriate records,
a tool where they will be found in the archives.
These records consisting of correspondence of annual reports of very statistical
information for the units or sections that were under consideration by the
participants. Next,
they were provided with a list of forms
ready to advance people in the
library who were willing to talk to the participants about the individual that
they would be interviewing next saw.
They were given a set times when they would go and have a preliminary interview
with their, uh, perspective.
Uh, subjects
also entail bringing to that preliminary interview certain key letters and
documents which they had grooves to discuss with the individual they were going
to interview and to inform that individual.
These documents would be used in connection with the interview.
The questions would be asked about them. Next,
uh,
had a session dealing with the techniques of interviewing.
And, uh,
this was an intensive lecture section lasting about two hours.
And then after that,
each individual went and did his first interview. Uh,
following that, uh,
there was a session on transcription, uh,
pointing out the problems involved in transcription and then the participants
began to transcribe the first hour.
This is where we ran into some trouble because some of the protesters couldn't
type. And uh, for this we had to use backup,
uh, office help in order to keep them abreast of our schedule,
which was very tight. Following the, uh,
the transcription of the first interview,
we had a session on editing on the techniques so that any of the problems with
editing and then each of the individuals went into the editing process and
edited their first hour following this.
Uh, I should say that perhaps simultaneous with this,
uh,
there was some time for discussion of the various aspects of the oral history,
its relationship to our guys. It's relationship to manuscript collections.
And uh, then after that,
which took us through the first week, we began, uh,
a second hour.
Now prior to the beginning of the second hour.
And also in the process of transcription and in the process of editing,
the participants had ample opportunity to talk with the staff,
uh,
to be told what problems they were having,
what problems they encountered,
and to show them how these might be corrected,
do discuss with them the kinds of questions they were asking,
and to put them on a better track if they needed to be put on a better track.
Now,
the second week was the same as the first,
except that they were, they were going back for their second hour.
And, uh, then following that,
they were given his direction in how to prepare a document,
which we prepare in the UCLA oral history program, known as the,
uh,
biography or history biography and history of the,
of the interview. And after that,
uh, they were all brought together, you know,
final session to talk about what we had done.
And, uh, this was very interesting. You taped it. And, uh,
the comments were quite candid. Most of the participants,
in fact,
18 felt that they had been given the kind of instruction that would enable them
to begin an oral history program.
Uh, many of them fell, however,
that there was not sufficient time for any of the various things through the
process. And in the final report,
the staff agreed that if such an Institute were to be given again that we would
have to extend it possibly two, three, maybe even four weeks,
and that we would probably want to limit it to 15 or maybe even 10 rather than
20, uh, to handle these people.
We broke up into groups of five and each member of our staff at one group,
I tried to get to all groups and talk to all individuals at all stages of the
process.
Now we are faced with a other problem.
Once the material was obtain the question,
the role as to what is to become of it.
The individuals in the library who were interviewed,
the professional libraries were quite concerned.
They didn't want this material to be made available. Uh,
so at this point,
the material is sealed until the retirement.
So all of the people who were interviewed
0: [inaudible] you're
2: very much Joe. I think you left us up on the mountain. We talked there.
All the hot stuff. You got
two gentlemen who claim to be unenlightened. I think I did extremely well.
Floor is now open for questions. Yes. Harry Hensley.
Cal state Fullerton. Um, I'd like to just mention that,
uh, in the program at Cal state, we seem to have done almost exactly what, uh,
Mr. Mack has done at UCLA on when we started last spring. And it, uh,
the program lasted a full year, a two semester program,
and instead of, uh, a given topic,
we were on local history. And I think it was very interesting that, uh,
uh, mr Bennison had the finished documents, uh,
the, uh,
books that he used as examples of, uh,
oral history techniques. Now in our program.
Excuse me, I didn't use these as examples of oral history techniques,
but simply as material which could be used by people who are interested in oral
history. Oh, I, well, I misunderstood. What I was trying to say was that, uh,
we were trying to build at our school a research document rather than a,
uh, I finished document a book or of that sort.
So rather than, uh,
giving a reading list of the type that you had suggested,
we had, uh,
the various articles that so many of these people here have read written on oral
history. And, uh,
then we had a wide discussion on these and the problems involved, et cetera.
And, uh, I think it's been a very successful program at ours.
And I think that we missed, uh, your problem,
not having enough time to, uh,
4: uh, one of our staff covering a number,
I think two of us that came in and gave lectures.
2: Very good lectures. Yes. Uh, uh, mr shippers, Don shippers and um,
sorry. Yes.
And he did a very good job on the techniques of interviewing and some
suggestions on the type of, uh, uh, questioning techniques. And,
uh, we have just been very successful. We had, um,
19 students in our first class. We have seven now,
uh, in the second they second beginning class. And we have, uh, uh,
out of the 12 that were still in school, have this beginning group.
We have 10 of them back in doing the editing and making this a finished,
uh, research tool available to the, uh, to researchers.
4: I would just like to comment, not only that,
I think this is by far the better route.
It sort of reminds me of last month when I was up at the arc of this meeting,
there wasn't session on train archivists and uh,
the arc was having managed to get along very far beyond the,
the Institute level in training as a professor or as close you're pointed out.
Um, dr Posner is perhaps the,
the founder of archival training in the United States.
These are mini programs and the graphs. A lot like mini skirts, you know,
they show a lot, but cover very little.
2: Yeah. It's like what came up,
the material that came out of this. Well,
we're only in the second semester of this program right now.
And actually I have, uh, uh,
one example of my work that I'd like to show you. It's my, uh, first document,
uh, here with me. And, uh,
by the end of this semester we will have about 100 hours of interviewing into a
file copy, which will be bound in the library. Yeah. Excellent.
What's the subject? Oh, local history. Um,
we left it open the first year and we went into, uh,
various ones, had individuals who had been importantly in orange County history,
uh, in the past 50 years that were available.
And each one would pick a particular topic and go into that. Yeah.
With the two or three interviewees,
you have a question right here in the front. Mr. Jensen yesterday,
we're just about at the point where he was through reveals some interesting
things about transcription machines when something else intervened and we had to
leave him.
Would it be appropriate now if I could ask of mr [inaudible] about the
transcription machines he
4: uses? I don't ask him to recommend anything.
But you said that there was some difficulties.
I think you surprised us by noting that the difficulty was the fact that some
people couldn't type I rather than fact,
this applies to 94% of those behind me. Uh,
could you say something about the machine that you we use? Uh,
we use the your 5,000. Yes.
With attachment we find it better than the Tannenberg which we had been using
because it's a slow noise operated. Uh,
what's mechanism? Uh, rather than, uh,
the kind that the Tannenberg has. Lewis,
you use the Tandberg we find that they're always in the shop and uh,
we haven't had that problem with the yours. What are the problems we did have?
Which I think is just, uh, did he expect it? Machine,
brand new machine didn't work cause they had to be taken back and others brought
out. How do you spell that word? We raked the yard
there about, uh, I believe there was about
400. About 400, four, five 15 with accessories.
3: Yeah. Maybe just, uh, keep the record straight.
We found the opposite to be true in our office that are,
we just have one your and,
and we've had a lot of trouble with that and we have a two 10 and burgs and they
worked pretty well. So
4: what do you just maybe do not follow this too long?
What do you find the lifespan to be?
3: Well, I don't think we've had it long enough. We've,
we've had them for two years now and they've worked fine.
4: Well, I, in all fairness to them, I should say that ours were, uh,
what we began to have a lot of trouble.
They were at least four or five years and I think perhaps too soon to say all
the years gonna stand up. How long have you had New York?
3: Four years. But I've, I've had trouble with that. You are from a start,
and this may have been just been what you call a lemon, but
I've got a healer and it was having problems with the tape snap thing or winding
on the spools and whatnot. But it's workable. You learn how to live with it.
Peter,
5: uh, I really don't think this is the place to get in too much discussion at this
point. I think a lot of other and hairy questions to be answered here,
but I think one statement I wanted to make yesterday, and again,
we were interrupting the tours.
If it's at all possible and you can't have a transcribing machine like the
fidelity phone or Fidel tape, whatever it's called,
which is built for transcription,
doesn't have all the electronics for recording and if you can afford it,
I think you're better off getting two tape recorders to to yours be at what you
will. Good.
There is nothing that will tear the guts out of a tape recorder as far as
recording quality.
Then it got foot go off and on and these active programs such as Cal and UCLA,
I'm sure it can go through a tape recorder transcribing a year.
That'll make it pretty lousy for recording. Oh we don't use this.
I think what brought out before,
and I think you shouldn't use the same machine if you can possibly help me cause
you would tear the guts out. So the Padella tape,
we used those and they just transcribing machines that just played back. Yeah,
that's all it is. One of those that's
$250 I need
far on a tangent here.
3: Training graduate students in the use of the world has
texted me and we have
taped it or topic. Um,
and it's been done in the economic history seminar helped teach in history
department and uh,
the students have gone out and done interviews with people from
the steel workers union. Um, this,
for the most part they're very successful.
But I would like to ask the adult group for some advice about a particular
point, which I think often comes up when you're using student, uh,
labor as it were. Um,
you have this program when you're running a university nursery school or what
have you. This works fine if the student is getting an egg.
But if the students, if there's something left that his performance,
uh, it doesn't work so well, uh,
I wouldn't be very much interested in the comments or discussion about, uh,
the results product, uh, and how you differentiate between,
uh, what really is acceptable for your program.
Would either panelists want to comment on that? Mr. Marsh?
I have to admit that my hearing is cool here.
Is there anyone in the audience would like to comment on that? Mr. Marsh?
So we can switch the tapes. Why don't you switch
Carla Alison
to collect data
that really could change? Not just the technique history.
I said enhance to Allen's his question.
It depends on the aims of your program. Out of man. Good heart point.
More concern with training students in historical methodology and research
rather than in preserving takes a few to use that we don't care if the students
don't come out with great documents just as long as they learn how, and again,
how to evaluate it. Types of questions to ask.
We feel that we've stuck as far as they're concerned.
Maybe they won't go into history, but it would aid them in some way.
Their postgraduate endeavors or if they are going to history. Certainly.
Definitely. What do you do with your terms? Our motto was what they could use.
Do you maintain it in the [inaudible] so that it can be used in the classroom
again,
but take samples and I suppose if someone wanted to see what was there.