ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses oral history process and gives insight into best practices. During the planning process it is important to think about the end goals of the oral history collection, how the information will be disseminated, in what form it will be viewed, and how long of a life do you expect the material to have? An archives/oral history program is generally more focused on long term objectives, such as ensuring that interviews are properly cataloged, transcribed and made available for posterity. Oral history best practices encourage a project to include multiple perspectives around a topic and recommend that narrators be selected who can provide this perspective. The selection process happens in different ways. Sometimes many people come forward who want to be interviewed, and the project must be selective. Other times it is difficult to find appropriate narrators and the project team needs to cultivate more relationships in the community.
