Thomas Smith

Thomas Smith

Thomas Smith is a third year Theatre Studies student at the University of Guelph. He would like to thank Dr. Kim Martin for organizing this class and everyone at the Norfolk Manor for their participation.

Reflection

From the beginning of this course we have been discussing the techniques involved with interviewing older people. In Ritchie’s Doing Oral History, Ritchie explains that “all interviewers need to put their interviewees at ease, to listen carefully to what they have to say, to respect their opinions and encourage candid responses."^[1] These are the core things to consider when interviewing someone. It was my job to make Brian feel comfortable to talk with me. I had to create an environment where he would be comfortable sharing his life story. When preparing for my interview, I did not know who my interviewee was, or what they were like. I was concerned with the ability of their memory. In Portelli’s Peculiarities of Oral History, he describes oral histories as being “distant from events and therefore undergo distortions deriving from faulty memory."^[2] As someone gets older their memory may become deteriorated. It was a big concern of mine that my interviewee could not remember much details about their past. However, our reading titled, Interviewing Older People, taught me that only seven to ten percent of older people experience a form of cognitive impairment.^[3] That statistic is much lower than I had thought and made me feel less anxious about conducting the interview.

There are many pros and cons to oral history. You are relying on the memory of your interviewee. As an interviewer, it is your job to facilitate the discussion. In Fry’s Suffragist Alice Paul’s Memoirs: Pros and Cons of Oral History, she reminds the reader that an interviewer is dealing with living sources. This requires a certain amount of social skills and interviewing knowledge, although Fry also says, “an interviewee who is good-natured, has an accurate memory, and is blessed with a systematic mind can rescue many a bumbling interviewer.”^[4] This statement is very true as an interviewee who has a story to tell, will be able to tell it with or without the interviewer’s guidance. The purpose of an oral history is to add to the historical record. Fry says that “... an interviewee can, from the depth of her memory, provide instant retrieval of elusive pieces of historical evidence”. Interviewing someone always has the chance to add to the historical record. You are collecting an individual’s experience of an event; it is possible that they noticed and remembered something of importance that no one else had. In Swain’s Problems for Practitioners of Oral History, he writes that, “James Reston, writing only a few days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, suggested that the close associates of the dead president should immediately put down on paper their recollections of anything he said or did int heir presence that will provide the material for future historians.”^[5] This is topical to my interview with Brian, as he discussed the assassination of J.F.K. in my interview and the impact that his death had all over the world. This clearly impacts oral history as well.

However, a big con of oral history is the reliance on technology. In the past, oral histories were conducting using recording tapes. Fry described the great difficulty in going through recordings to find the exact moments in interviews, and the time involved in listening to the tapes. The technology involved with recording oral histories has changed. For example, with this interview, I used my LG smartphone. However, technological difficulties with recording remain. During my interview with Brian, my cell phone restared. I am not sure what caused this, except that I tried to use my recording app and camera at the same time. I assume this was too much for my older device. Due to my phone restarting, the first recording did not save. To resolve this issue, Dr. Kim Martin allowed me to use her cell phone as a recording device. Thankfully, Brian understood the issue I was having and was willing to restart the interview. However, much of the spirit of the first interview was gone. Brian’s reaction to me bringing a picture of the J.F.K. article was lost. I only had the time to go over the main points of the first interview. Passion was lost, due to the nature of having to re-tell the same stories. The only genuine reaction from Brian was when I asked again if there was anything else Brian wanted to share. This reminded him of some large fires that hapened in downtown Guelph, such as the Wellington Hotel fire in 1975. While I could not get the initial reactions and such from the first interview, having Brian do it again for me allowed him more time to recall things about Guelph’s history.

Transcribing my interview with Brian was a long and tedious process. When you are talking with someone, you use filler words a lot. As a transcriber, I had to decide what filler would be included in my transcription. Anything that was a full word such as like and so, were included. However, I decided to leave out filler things like ‘umm’ and uh’. The contrast between the recorded interview and the transcript is very interesting. With the recording, you can understand the questions I ask Brian and his answers, but in the transcription some sentences do not make sense. Pauses and tones used in natural discussion do not translate well into text. My interviewee was also a fast talker. When transcribing I had to frequently listen to segments of my interview around four times each, just to make sure I pick up every word he had said.

When researching and writing this oral history, I had to remember that this project will be published online. As described in The Marriage of Oral History and the World Wide Web, this oral history project for an undergraduate student was to “acquaint students with oral history methods and help them learn about local or family history, English and writing skills and current Web technology."^[6] I had to consider the accessibility of web page to future historians, and the importance of information shown. By publishing my oral history project through a web site like CWRC, it ensures that my project will be accessible to scholars who wish to see it, as well as the ability to listen to my interviewee’s recording at the same time.

If I could do my interview over, I would like to use a voice recorder. I could not have predicted my phone to shut off, but if given the chance to go back and use a stand-alone recording device, I would. I was also very nervous for my interview. I was nervous about not being able to think of questions, what my interviewee thought of me, and anything that could go wrong. For the future, I now know that is better to be adaptable to any situation, rather than stress over what can go wrong. Losing my interview was one of the worst things that could happen during an oral history interview. However, I was able to recover from this technical difficulty and create an oral history project around Brian's life, even with a shorter interview.

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Click here for Thomas's interviewee, Brian Hersey's page and for a link to an audio file of the full interview.