Oral history research is more than simply tape-recording a conversation. Conventional background research, using documentary sources, helps the oral historian to recreate the hisorical, social, political, economic, and cultural contexts that allow you to interpret oral history. Facts, alone, are not history until they are interpreted. To a large extent, interpretation in oral history involves seeing relations between the individual's particular experience and the larger social and historical context discovered in background research. But even here, connections are being made between individual experience and background research in sociological and culture theory.
Interpretation puts the particular into larger perspectives.
In addition to the need to establish meaningful contexts for interpreting oral history, the researcher must also deal with the problem that memory is fallible. Background research also helps you be a better interviewer, and enables you to help an interviewee recall more experiences with greater accuracy. The oral history interview builds on this basic social competence. Decide on manageable goals. For example - reconstructing the role of the church in the development of the black community in Abingdon.