In my belief, oral history is a method for exploring the mental world of an individual in order to access his personal views, memories and experiences through specialized interviews so that they are used in historical, political, social, anthropological, psychological and literary studies as accurate, well-documented and credible information. Awareness of interview techniques constitutes the basis of any project on oral history; therefore, experts with different specialties can act as interviewers. Moreover, if the collected information is preserved in sound archives, it will turn into an oral source in the form of “interview” and have the capability to be tapped for forming different written genres.
A brief look at the evolution of the oral history field in Iran and other countries suggests that this new science has evolved in two forms. In the first form, it focuses on the “oral profile” of the subjects or the “oral biography” of the people influential in special fields and witnessing particular events whose outcome is not to be published but to be archived as an oral source. At present, such sources abound in the world as main sources of information. In Iran, there are, however, similar sources which are neither systematically recorded nor seeking to attain this objective. In fact, they are mainly archived as the references for some published books. They are always of great significance due to the interviewees presence in different events and play a role in forming other common written genres, including the “biographies”, “memoires”, “historical accounts”, “articles” and even “plays” and “stories and novels”. However, the written works tapping the oral sources are not classified as the independent genre of “oral history”.
In the second and prevalent form of oral history in Iran, it is used to obtain information from human sources with the sole aim of producing written works. In spite of the first form, the author has a written genre in mind and then refers to the witnesses to events in order to complete his information and create a work in this genre. As this form of oral history does not belong to any scientific discipline, all authors, including the fictionists, biographers, memoires writers, chroniclers and researchers of social, political and historical issues would tap it, and the works created in this manner are not tagged as “oral history”. In this form, the aims and objectives of the first draft influences the quality and quantity of the information extracted from the oral source. For instance, if a fictionist uses this method, the outcome of the interview will be used in the plot of the story, ups and downs of its events and believability of characters, and the oral source produced through interviewing will not prove useful for a historiographer. Similarly, a memoires writer would follow the same process with the aim of writing a well-documented work which would not be useful for the historiographer. However, some parts of the interviews done to facilitate memoires writing will come to use in historiography as they are both based on biographic information. Furthermore, when the historiographer refers to the witnesses to an event, he does not need to extract the interviewees tone, life details and views; however, he obtains the information he needs in much shorter a time than the memoires writer and does not elongate the interview without any purpose. Needless to say, such information will prove less useful for the memoires writers and fictionists.
Adopting an idealistic viewpoint and taking national, economic and cultural issues into consideration, one would thus conclude that the best method for collecting an individuals information is the first form of oral history in which maximum information is collected and the experts in different fields are consulted to produce an outcome which would prove useful for all written genres and prospective researches. The research centers and national libraries might be the best options as they promote cooperation among all experts in different disciplines.
Despite the constant measures taken to address oral history in the past two decades, this science is unfortunately on the wrong track existentially and functionally and has overshadowed documentary writings such as memoires writing in Iran. It has also been considered exclusive to historians and history experts and, thus, some propositions have been formed that seem inadequate and incorrect. Some of these propositions are studied below. It is worth mentioning that the following statements have been continually repeated in the original and translated literature on oral history:
“Oral history is a type of case history” (Camus). “Oral history is a subset of the science of history” (Golshan). “This method of historiography has captured the attention of academic circles and history research centers” (Mir-kazami). As mentioned earlier, oral history is neither a written genre nor a type of historiography. It is, in fact, an interdisciplinary method for collecting the needed information on all fields of science. Therefore, if a discipline is to be introduced for the “interview techniques”, “oral history” would be a good option. Accordingly, a university professor maintains, “In 1949, oral history was first established in Columbia University as a discipline of history to collect information” (Nouraei). I have personally searched the disciplines taught at some universities of the world but have found no disciple named “oral history” in the history department of an official university. This indicates the fact that oral history has been viewed as a method for collecting information on people, centers and activities involved in different academic disciplines.
According to the abstract of an article presented at the seventh conference on oral history subtitled the Compilation and Production of Oral History Works, “Compilation of the oral history of war is one of the most important missions conducted by the Iranian oral history in the past years” (Hasssan-abadi). The common mistake in similar statements on oral history is that they translate “memoires” as “oral history” while “memoires” is a written genre which could be produced using oral history or not. Above all is the issue of “compilation of oral history works” to which a conference is dedicated. How is it possible to compile oral history works when there is no written genre known as oral history? Of course, compilation of stories, plays, memoires, biographies, reports, dissertations and articles is meaningful but what about oral history which is deprived of a written genre? The conference should have addressed the question as to “how the sources provided by oral history should be used to compile different literary, historical and social genres, including the memoires, stories, articles, historical accounts, biographies and so on.”
“Oral history is a constant and systematic effort to recognize the events and subjects and collect the information and analyze them through systemic and active interviews done by the [oral] historian with the players of and the witnesses to events” (Kamari). Although more accurate, this definition has confined the oral history to the historians and historiographers field of study.
While an easy to understand concept for other nations, oral history has, with no good reason, become too complex for the Iranians; a problem which could be resolved. Therefore, efforts should be made to release it from subjective definitions and attain national unanimity regarding this important source of study. The Iranian researchers should follow the foreign experts in oral history and focus on interview techniques in order to collect the most possible and comprehensive information, adopt appropriate methods to attain accurate and correct information from the interviewees, make the extracted information functional and put the sources in appropriate categories. The libraries, archives and databanks enjoy the capability to organize the sources and make them available to experts as the treasure troves of concepts and subjects.

*This is the concluding part of a series of essays on oral history which were successively published in early 2012. Although the present essay was ready to go to print in February, its publication was postponed due to some personal considerations and consultations with the experts in this field. Offering his sincere apologies, the author takes the opportunity to thank the staff of Tarikh-e Shafahi (Iranian Oral History) weekly for their patience and support.

Nosratollah Samadzadeh
Librarian of War Library at Arts Center
nsepost@gmail.com
April 20th, 2012

Previous Parts:
1) http://ohwm.ir/en/cover.php?id=57
2) http://ohwm.ir/en/cover.php?id=58
3) http://ohwm.ir/en/cover.php?id=62

Translated by: Katayoun Davallou



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