That's great! Now the real planning begins. Oral history projects take considerable time, training, research, money, and motivation. It is estimated that it takes between 30-60 hours, and 3-4 months to complete one hour of interview from start to finish. This involves pre-interview planning, research, and relationship building with the narrator, time of the interview, and time is takes to process the interview such as transcription and narrator review before it is moved to an archive.
Project summaries are good documents to have - they can be shared as an outreach and marketing tool, are needed for grant applications, and help keep the project on track along the way.
A project summary should include:
While it could still be considered a debatable topic, the U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services' "Policy for Protection of Human Research Subjects" 2019 revisions now exclude oral history from IRB review and approval through a specific definition of research. The exclusion is found in the final regulations under Section 46.102 and are as follows:
The Office of Human Research Protections offers additional guidance here. For more information on oral history and IRB, please visit the Oral History Association.
Trinity University's Institutional Review Board follows the "Policy for Protection of Human Research Subjects" 2019 revisions and the Office of Human Research Protections guidance. Please visit the Institutional Review Board T-Learn page or email irb@trinity.edu for more information.