ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the planning first steps, discusses how to form a planning team, and cover legal and ethical planning steps. Community oral history projects often begin when someone has an idea about recording some interviews. The project planning team can, and often does, call on others in the community to help with various parts of the plan, but it is the team's responsibility to use answers to the guiding planning questions as the basis for project planning. A planning director agrees to take responsibility for keeping the planning team organized and moving ahead. The time to start identifying community supporters is when you begin to plan. Oral history projects benefit from access to many people and many resources, but the central one for community based projects is the community. Legal Release Agreements convey the message that interview participants are not just giving consent for use of their interview information but are recognizing an oral history interview as a copyrightable document.
