Oral History is the process of letting participants tell their story of what happened.

We wanted to talk to some of the participants to clarify some discrepancies which we found in our existing data.

For example, the husband of a nurse at the hospital where the cases were first found played a role in the case, but accounts were conflicting and unclear.

There were also questions about secondary infections.

I created a framework which gave the participants the opportunity to tell their own story, while also focusing on some information we wanted to know

The oral historian interjects himself into the process as little as possible, except to encourage the interviewee to talk and share information.

This is a little different than usual in oral history. Often, you are talking about personal matters, or you are pursuing subjects which may not be clear to the interviewee, or you are trying to get them to talk about things they may not want to talk about. It’s unethical to fool your interviewee. In this case, the discussion is more about facts and professional process. You subject knows the purpose of you inquiry, and is not about personal matters. However, if mistakes were made, especially personal errors, the person may be hesitant to make themselves look bad, or reveal something that would be professionally embarrassing. You need to balance your inquiry with judgment, and not trick your subject into revealing information. Oral history is an open process.

I will talk more about oral history further into the presentation.