Product Description
Willa Baum once again shares her enormous knowledge of oral history in her second AASLH book, focusing this time on what to do when ending interviews, how to decide whether or not to transcribe, how to process data, and how to transcribe. Also provided are detailed instructions on auditing tapes, editing, working with legal agreements, indexing, and more.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 2 reviews)

This book is for professionals only.

If you are looking for some helpful info about how to record your grandparents memories, this is NOT the book for you.

The target audience is for organizations that create historical records for professional researchers. The information in the book talks about teams of people including transcribers, editors and final typists all working on a document that is edited and indexed to be used by historians, writers and other researchers.

There is no info about conducting the interview. I suppose if I was involved in creating historical documents, I could have told that from the title, but I am not. I was dissapointed when I found out that the whole book is about converting spoken text to a hard-copy format and deciding what to include, whether to edit or correct the words spoken, etc.

The book also needs some serious updating as it is still in the typewriter age with references to using XXX to mark incorrect text, using copy ribbon and carbon copies.

If you work for an organization that is attempting to create historical records, this book might be useful but for the amateur, it is not going to help very much.
April 02, 2007

Fabulous 'how to' book: Transcribing and Editing Oral History

Fabulous 'how to' book. Useful for people working on their own personal histories or for people collecting or faciliating the oral histories of others.
Well and clearly written, humorous and honest. Examines details of issues and the approaches for resolving them. Written before computers were everywhere and so revision discussions are no longer very relevant but everything else is.
Useful for people working on their own personal histories or for people collecting or faciliating the oral histories of others.
Willa rocks.
February 16, 2007

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Doing Oral History
by Donald A. Ritchie

The Oral History Manual (American Association for State and Local History Book Series)
by Mary Kay Quinlan

Curating Oral Histories: From Interview to Archive
by Nancy MacKay

Recording Oral History, Second Edition: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences
by Valerie Raleigh Yow

The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Opus Books)
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