In “What Is Oral History”, we learned that “oral history might be understood as a self-conscious, disciplined conversation between two people about some aspect of the past considered by them to be of historical significance and intentionally recorded for the record.” Although the conversation usually takes place as an interview, with one person asking questions and the other answering them, it is more of a conversation. Oral history has allowed us to understand what it might have been like at another time from by interviewing those who had lived through certain events. It is important for interviewers to try and help or get the narrator (person in question) to try and remember as most of the details that they possibly can. Also, at times, it may be important for the interviewer to read between the lines as to what the narrator is trying to get at and even dig deeper to answer some harder questions. Without oral history, there is much that we would not know about events that we have not experienced. When you really think about it, without oral history, we wouldn’t have much history at all.
Brittany Barger