Oral History: The Ethics and the Law of Recording Someone's Story

From the first meeting to the archive, everyone involved in an oral history is responsible for respecting the narrator's perspective and dignity. NPS photo.

Ethics: a relationship of trust

Ethical oral history rests on mutual respect and trust. The Oral History Association's Statement on Ethics sets out the responsibilities an interviewer takes on in recording someone's story for preservation, research and public use. The key elements:

• Informed consent — from the first contact, make sure the narrator knows why you want to talk, who sponsors the project and why, where the interview will be archived, how it might be used, and who will have access — and that the process continues with reviewing the transcript.
• A legal release — explain that they'll sign a form assigning copyright of the interview to a repository, so the archive can share and use it as the form describes. Signing doesn't mean giving up the use of their own story.
• Trained interviewers — who understand how complex the relationship between interviewer and narrator can be.
• Respect — welcome differing views of the past.
• A range of narrators — seek people with different perspectives.
• The right equipment — what interviewers can use confidently and narrators feel comfortable with.
• Collaboration — bring narrators into planning: how will the project help them and their community, and what do they want it to achieve?
• Accuracy — give narrators time to review transcripts, correct them, and decide what becomes public.
• Stewardship — have an archival plan so recordings, transcripts and related materials are cared for now and for future generations.

For oral historians, legal and ethical questions go hand in hand. NPS photo.

The law: interviews are copyrighted works

Legal questions can be complex. Some points to consider:

• An oral history interview is an original creative work covered by U.S. copyright law. A signed Park Service release gives the NPS the right to distribute, reproduce, display, perform the interview publicly and create derivative works from it.
• Because an interview is made jointly, the interviewer signs a release too.
• When contractors rather than employees conduct interviews, the contract should transfer the rights.

"Orphan works" — interviews with no signed release — worry many Park Service archives, and the problem is widespread across cultural heritage institutions; archivists and the U.S. Copyright Office have taken it up. If a narrator can't be found:

• make a good-faith effort to find them or their next of kin to sign a release;
• check whether anything in the interview would be risky to publish — defamatory statements, for example;
• be cautious about distribution: share it with park or program staff for research and education, and allow use in the archives.

Learn more

• Cornell University Library, Copyright Term and the Public Domain.
• Jeremy Evans and Melissa Hernandez Duran, "Rights Review for Sound Recordings: Strategies Using Risk and Fair Use Assessments," The American Archivist, 2018.
• John A. Neuenschwander, A Guide to Oral History and the Law, Oxford University Press, 2014.
• U.S. Copyright Office, Orphan Works and Mass Digitization, June 2015.
• The Park Service's legal release form for oral history projects.

The series: Choosing Recording Equipment (previous) · Interviewing (next)

Sources

Based on "Considering Legal and Ethical Issues," Oral History Project Process, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.