What Is Oral History?
Conducting Your Own Family Oral Histories

 

The Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum hopes this information will inspire you to

become interested in your own family history and traditions.

 

Lokey Lytjen, Executive Director

   Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum

 

 

Oral History Projects are rich and rewarding ones that help future generations understand life in a bygone time and place. It's the experiences, remembrances, and stories of people in a family, neighborhood or community that are passed on orally. This type of history captures the contemporary knowledge of individuals gleaned from firsthand experience of events or places on audio or video media, and preserves this information for generations to come.

Oral histories provide an excellent way to discover additional information about local history when traditional historical sources may be limited or may not provide vivid or comprehensive pictures of the past.  They become invaluable tools because of their capacity for finding out things that are not available in other ways.

 

Through oral histories, one can document what people did in an ordinary day, from their work life and leisure activities to what they wore and what they ate. More importantly, one can learn how people perceived or understood the past and if their perspectives have changed over time.

 

Oral history interviews create a personal narrative about events, places, and people. They provide the narrator with a sense of how his or her own experiences fit into a larger context. When well researched, properly conducted, and carefully examined, oral history interviews contribute uniquely to the body of knowledge about history, from the local to the national level. Carefully gathered oral history is often just as important as more traditional evidence, and this is particularly so in the case of local history.

 

2006.0039.014  Verba & Slim Lawrence by Tusker's Cabin

 

 

How do you know if the information in an oral history is true?

 

 

Like most other historical sources, oral histories have their strengths and weaknesses. Seldom is historic evidence absolutely accurate. Because an oral interview records an individual's life story, or chronicles events or places the narrator experienced, personal bias often enters into the narrative. The subject's memory, like those of most people, may lapse, have errors, or develop distortions over time. Bias and other weaknesses, are also found in more traditional historical materials. When working with historical sources in general, one must evaluate the source and substance of oral histories and corroborate the information, to the extent possible, with a variety of materials.

2004.0102.605 Jim Manges fishing Cottonwood Creek

    

Despite their limitations, oral histories may often be the only source of information available, particularly in the case of local, community, and family history. They are very important for providing information about topics for which little other data exists. Oral history interviews are firsthand accounts of the experiences of particular individuals, and can shed light on many topics. When oral histories are gathered from a variety of people who witnessed events or are connected to a topic, knowledge of the subject expands significantly. Multiple narrations also enhance our understanding of the various viewpoints related to the topic and foster critical assessment of the interviews as historical data.

 

How does one create a useful and interesting oral history? 

 

The first step is to identify a focus or a topic to study - such as your family's history. Secondly, conduct preliminary research that will provide the basis for developing interview outlines and questions for the various narrators or speakers that you wish to interview.

 

 

 

 

2003.0117.317 2 babies in oval frames/ 3 small children in very old dress

 

Having good equipment and a quiet location for conducting your interview is helpful. Careful preparation yields high-quality, rewarding interviews. Finally, making the results of your oral history project available to local libraries or archives - or to your family members - is also important.

     

Oral histories help to balance and to expand more traditional historical resources. They reveal the personal meanings of people's lives and the lives of those around them. Moreover, the stories they uncover capture the richness of the human experience and preserve it for those who come after us - whether professional historians or those simply interested in the progression of life.