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Books You May Find Helpful
- Alessi,
Jean, and Jan Miller. Once Upon a Memory: Your Family Tales and Treasures.
(White Hall, VA: Betterway Publications, 1987) A great book for offering
suggestions about how to do an oral history, what questions to ask,
and how to organize and preserve your results. This is a very readable
book.
- Banks,
Ann. First Person America. (New York: Knopf Publishers, 1980)
A wonderful book for middle school students and above on a variety of
topics, from pioneering out west to running a medicine show at carnivals
and fairs. The interviews were collected by writers working for the
Federal Writersí Project of the WPA in the 1930s.
- Croom,
Emily Anne. Unpuzzling Your Past: A Basic Guide to Genealogy.
(Cincinnati, OH: Betterway Books, 1995) This book is a wonderful resource
guide for a number of topics in doing family history research, but also
has a thorough list of questions to ask when doing an oral history interview.
See chapters 6 through 9. For older students, grades 7-12.
- Davis,
Donald. Telling Your Own Stories. (Little Rock, AK; August House
Publishers, 1993) Offers ideas for questions to ask in an oral history,
or of yourself, and ideas how to tell a story well. (For grades 6-12).
- Hoopes,
James. Oral History: An Introduction for Students. (Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979) While written for older
students (high school and college), this book has many helpful suggestions
for how to run an interview, and a good discussion of why oral history
is an important part of our historical record.
- KBYU
Television and Brigham Young University. Ancestors Television Series
Companion Teacherís Guide. Activities centering on family history
designed for grades 7-12. (Provo and Salt Lake City, UT: KBYU/Brigham
Young University, 1996).
- Rosenbluth,
Vera. Keeping Family Stories Alive: Discovering and Recording the
Stories and Reflections of a Lifetime. 2nd edition (Point Roberts,
WA: Hartley and Marks Publishers, 1997) A very good on the subject overall,
though probably more for junior high or high school students or adults.
Good chapters on all the steps involved in an oral history interview,
from how to prepare the interviewee, to the kinds of questions to ask,
to sample interviews, to doing oral history in the classroom. It contains
a great bibliography.
- Taylor,
Maureen. Through the Eyes of Your Ancestors: A Step-by-Step Guide
to Uncovering Your Familyís History. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1999) A great book for thinking about family history overall,
and the questions you can ask your family members (or others) in an
oral history. (For grades 5-12).
- Wiggington,
Eliot. Foxfire (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1972) This
book started as a magazine written by students in Rabun Gap, Georgia
in 1966, and is based on their oral histories with older people in the
community. The magazine became wildly popular, and the book version
of Foxfire appeared in 1972, with several sequels published into
the 1980s. A model project for doing oral history in the classroom.
- Wolfman,
Ira. Do People Grow on Family Trees? Genealogy for Kids and Other
Beginners. (New York: Workman Publishing, 1991) A wonderful book
for grades 5-12. It has a section on interview questions, and suggestions
for audio taping an interview.
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