Recording Your Family History: A Guide to Preserving Oral History with Videotape, Audiotape, Suggested Topics and Questions, Interview Techniques

William Fletcher sets the standard for instructions on doing oral histories. His advice on "how to" is concise and laced with experience. The thing that sets him apart from other writers is his exhaustive list of questions. The good-idea-fairy helped him build nearly 300 pages of great questions! It's impossible to ask them all but they give great lead to conducting numerous interviews to really cover your topic. I've used this book with my grandmother and have uncovered so many things she never told anyone about. I recently purchased the 1989 copy of this book and have the 1983 version at home (somewhere, that's why I needed another copy). There is also a 1986 version. All three are very similar and I don't really notice the differences other than in his explanations of equipment and use of video. Any of them would be a great purchase for use in guiding your questions.

If you would like to record a family member's story or interview someone, this books goes through the stages of a life logically and provides the questions to each stage. eg childhood, youth etc. I use the questions as a base and change them to my needs. It has provided excellent starting point. It even has a special section for different ethnicty/religion ie Jewish section, African American questions. Fanatastic book!!!!