Home > Student/Teacher Section > Using Primary Sources > Interviews

A Few Examples of Interviews

"Presidential Hopeful: Ronald Reagan," William F. Buckley Jr. interviews Ronald Reagan, taped on January 14, 1980. Copyright by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.  All Rights Reserved.

Interview from the broadcast archives of William F. Buckley Jr.'s television show Firing Line. Firing Line was broadcast from 1966 to 1999, first as an hour-long program and later as a half-hour show. The Firing Line collection is housed in the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University and includes videotapes of approximately 1,500 shows, as well as transcripts, still photographs, preparation materials, and other items. Clips of the programs are available on YouTube.

Not all interviews have been recorded. Sometimes the audio or video tapes no longer exist, or have been damaged and are difficult to understand. But a typed "transcript" might be available. Also, most oral history interviews are "transcribed." That means someone has listened to the interview and typed it up, word-for-word. You will notice that the Firing Line interviews above have transcripts available.

Here is an example of the first page of the transcript of an oral history interview with a woman who was a student of Frederick Jackson Turner, a very famous history professor.

Interview with Grace Pilgrim Bloom, University of Wisconsin-River Falls Oral History Project Interviews, River Falls Mss AW, University of Wisconsin-River Falls Area Research Center, River Falls, Wisconsin)

Society of American Archivists Reference, Access and Outreach Section's National History Day Committee| Credits

The Society of American Archivists does not assume responsibility for the opinions and views published on this auxiliary site.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

This website uses Google Analytics for tracking usage statistics - see privacy policy.