Oral History and Professional Reputation: Addressing Concerns in Interview Transcription

• In Event: Words on the Page: Challenges and Opportunities with Transcription

Abstract

This paper explores conflicts in the power dynamics between oral historians, their
interviewees, and the private organizations with whom the oral historian is contracted.
The American Academy of Neurology began its Oral History Project in 2011. The
organization has collected fourteen interviews with major figures in the field of
neurology, conducted by a trained oral historian and a physician. The interviews typically
last approximately three hours and cover the physician’s personal and professional life.
Interview transcripts and audio are deliverables to the AAN. The AAN hopes to use these
interviews as public relations tools for the organization and is currently seeking an
archival home for the collection.

Between interview and delivery, the AAN has stipulated that interviewees have
the opportunity to review their interviews for correctness and clarity of ideas. To
differing degrees, physicians have been very insistent on protecting their reputations
through heavy editing of their transcripts, despite reassurances from oral historians on the project about the nature of conversational text and the intent of the project. One physician even blocked the donation of the audio from his interview to the organization, preferring to limit the organization’s access to his edited text. Notes have been made on interview transcripts that have been heavily edited to alert audiences to the nature of the
“transcript.” This contract position places the oral historian in a difficult position of
maintaining oral history standards, meeting their obligations to the professional
organization, serving as the intermediary between the interviewee and the organization,
and protecting the rights of the interviewee as guaranteed by their consent form. This
paper explores the different power dynamics at play in contract work with professional
organizations in which reputation of the organization and the individual become points of discussion and negotiation in the shared development of an interview.

Author

• Lauren Klaffke, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis