What is the Focus of Your Project?

• Is your focus collecting information about a certain area or time period? Do you want to focus on certain Elders?
• Is your focus to present oral history information to the community?
• Is your focus raising language and literacy skills? If so, it’s important to encourage the group to take ownership of the project. Leave as many decisions as possible to group members once the project is up and running.

What is the Scope of Your Project?

Depending on the scope of your project, you can do your own oral history interviews or you can listen to recordings that have already been recorded.

• Does your group have the skills, knowledge and equipment to do oral history interviews or will your group need learning time?
• Is your project short-term? If the project is only a few months long, you might work with oral history interviews that already exist, rather than doing your own interviews.
• Is your project long-term – perhaps seven to eight months? Or do you hope to seek funding to continue the project every year? Then there will be enough time for group members to learn to do oral history interviews, carry out and preserve the interviews and present information to the community.