As the preeminent journal dedicated to oral history, we want to make sure that our readers, whatever their background, gain insight into the role of oral history in the books that we review.
Questions for your consideration:
· What’s the book about and why does it matter?
· How does oral history contribute to the book?
· Why will oral historians be interested in this book?
· In what ways does the author/book rely on oral histories or interviews as evidence?
· Does the author use the term “oral history” or only “interviews”? (In other words, it is important to know what their claims are and who the audience is.)
· Who are they professionally? Are they coming to the work as sociologists, journalists, historians, librarians, community practitioners, anthropologists, or something else?
· Did the author conduct the interviews, rely on an archive or both?
. Some authors also rely on published, or secondary, sources. What do you make of their using secondary sources in the context of their book?
· Further, for those authors who conducted interviews themselves, do they discuss their methodologies (how they found people to interview, for example, and how many times they met, are just two questions you can ask)? If they don’t discuss methodology, what effect does this have on how readers can analyze their work from an oral history field perspective?
· The details of the evidence collected are important whether they conducted the interviews themselves or relied on archives, or both–the who, how many, when, where, how, and why? Where do they discuss the evidence that they present? For example, in the introduction, or bibliography, or throughout? Is a list of interviews with details, including names, provided or not? If so, where?
· Do they have a personal stake in the story, and if so, what is it? (For example, oral historian and surfer Steve Estes published a book called Surfing the South.)
· Is the book a work of popular history/oral history meant for a wide audience (e.g., Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993) or an academic work (Nēpia Mahuia’s Rethinking Oral History: An Indigenous Perspective)? Who is the audience and who will find the book useful and why, but also, crucially, what will oral historians learn from it?
· Also, is it a stand-alone book or part of a series, such as Voice of Witness?
· What is the one thing that you most want readers to remember about the book?
