what to do well before the interview

1. Personally communicate with the proposed narrator

Communicate clearly and directly with the person you plan to interview (the future narrator).

Make sure you know what the person's preferred language is, if she or he is not a native speaker of English.

If the person is not a native English speaker, and you are not absolutely fluent in her or his preferred language, bow out gracefully & find another person who IS fluent in that language to conduct the interview. The interview is NOT an appropriate place to practice or brush up on your Spanish!

2. R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Find out how the person pronounces her or his name, and practice saying it that way.

Find out how the person wants to be addressed: Miss, Ms., Mrs., Mr., Sister, Father, Brother, Pastor, Reverend, Bishop, Deputy, Sgt., Officer, Chief, Professor, Judge, Dr., Senator, Representative.

Do NOT, do NOT, do NOT assume that you may call someone by her or his first name. If the person wants to be addressed this way, she or he will tell you so.

3. Explain the process and the potential risks

Make sure you have gone over the interview process and protocol with the future narrator.

Remind the narrator that we are asking for her or his own story. We are NOT there to extract information, to "get" the person to tell us certain things, or to have particular questions answered. We are there to facilitate the person sharing her or his own story, emphasizing those aspects of events, feelings, or processes that the person feels is important, not what someone else might think as important.

Remind the person that this interview will NOT be in question & answer format.

Make sure you have sent or delivered to him or her the brochure explaining the interview process. There are three major changes, however, please point these out.
a) We originally said that we would interview any person for more than an hour on a single day. We've increased that to about two and a half hours. We will not stay for more than three hours.
b) We will give the interview materials, once reviewed and approved by the narrator, and donated to us, to the UT Libraries, but we may store the physical materials with the Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) instead of or along with the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. We will also offer the narrator the option of permitting the materials to be accessible online. The narrator may choose to donate the materials for library-use only, however.
c) In the brochure, we specify certain areas that we want the narrator to tell us about. Now, we just want the narrator to tell us what is important, as she or he sees it.

Ask if the person has any questions.

Remind the future narrator that the interview is NOT privileged. Although we will keep their stories confidential unless and until the narrator releases the information to the public (and this will be very clear when this happens), the interview session is NOT legally protected. If someone obtained a court order, the interviewer and the Texas After Violence Project could be forced to turn over all its notes and correspondence about the interview, and people could be forced to testify about it. This is one of the reasons that we MUST NOT ever interview anyone about a pending criminal case, or who has a criminal case pending even if it is not the one that you will be interviewing her about.

4. Agree on the method of recording (audio only or audio-visual) you will use

Make sure the person knows that two people will be coming: you and the videographer.

Make sure the person knows that you plan to videotape the interview. If the person does not want to be videotaped, but only wants to be recorded aurally, that is fine. Work that out ahead of time, but also allow for the person to change his or her mind and be prepared for that.

5. Find an appropriate place to conduct the interview

Explain that you will need a private, well-lighted, and quiet place to conduct an interview, and that it needs to be somewhere where other people will not be walking in and out. If the person's home is not going to work, find an alternative.

When looking for places to conduct interviews -- NEVER, EVER, EVER use a lawyer's, doctor's, or any kind of counselor's or therapist's office UNLESS you are interviewing a person in that profession and you are interviewing that person is her or his own office.

6. Accessibility matters

If you are not meeting in the narrator's own home or own workplace, make sure that the place you agree to meet is accessible to people with mobility impairments. Do NOT assume that it will be: many, many, many places that are supposed to be open to the public are NOT accessible. Private homes are rarely accessible. Become familiar with accessibility requirements and take them seriously. Check out the building yourself, if at all possible. If you're interviewing someone far away and you won't have a chance to check out the building yourself, we will ask for help from someone local. (An exception would be if the narrator suggests a place, and you raise the issue of accessibility and she assures you that she has been to the place recently and is comfortable there.)

7. Prepare

Read everything you can find about the proposed narrator, the community or communities in which she or he lives and moves, and the event or events you expect the narrator to talk about. Find out the names of what you expect might be key people and places. Make a timeline for the events. Put those events in context: what was happening in the community, in Texas, in the law, in public culture, during these time periods? Prepare to enter a world. Read guidebooks, but prepared to ditch the guidebooks and observe what you can with your own senses, especially your eyes and ears.

At the same time, be flexible. The narrator may focus on aspects of the events, or other events. She or he will probably tell you things you never dreamed of asking about. This circumstance does not mean you haven't prepared well; just the opposite. You need to be open and allow the narrator to say what she or he needs to say. Don't impose your own agenda or expectations!