Oral Histories Guidelines for
the Nantucket Community

These forms are available here in pdf format. PDFs are easily printable, and load immediately on your computer if you have Adobe Acrobat (a free program available at the Acrobat website).

Oral history tips
Two articles that offer a few tips on conducting interviews.

Oral history interview agreement
An agreement form to be completed by the interviewer and the interviewee waiving rights to the tape, transcript, or any images taken during the interview. This allows tapes and transcripts then donated to the Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) to make copies of the tape for researchers or for other uses and also releases us from any liability for content of the tapes. Remember, it's important for interviewers to sign as well as the person being interviewed, since you're not officially affiliated with the NHA.

Gam attendees sign-in sheet
In Nantucket, some oral histories involve large groups of people and are called "gams" after the meetings of ships. In this case, it's impractical to ask everyone to sign a formal waiver. This sign-in sheet should suffice.

Oral history biographical sketch
In an oral history interview, you'll rarely want to take time to get all the complete details with dates of a person's life. If you send this ahead of you and ask your respondent to fill it out ahead of time, you'll get the details and it won't interrupt your flow.

Oral history cataloguing information
This information is essential to make the taped interview accessible researchers.

Checklist of materials
What the NHA needs to help preserve this interview and make it accessible.