Keeping ten accounts straight over two months

A single interview is manageable to hold in your head. Ten interviews, gathered over two months and touching the same events from different angles, are not. Details blur, dates slip, and a reporter can end up rereading old notes just to confirm who told them what, which is time better spent on the reporting itself.

The projects that hold together well share one habit in common: a log kept from the first interview onward, updated the same day as each conversation, before memory has a chance to soften the details. It sounds like a small discipline, and it is, but it is the discipline that most oral history projects abandon somewhere around interview four, once the workload builds.

What belongs in the log

A useful log records more than a name and a date. It notes where the conversation happened, roughly how long it ran, what topics came up unprompted, and a short line on how the subject seemed to feel about the material being discussed. None of this needs to be elaborate. A working log is a tool, not a finished document, and it should be quick enough to fill in that you actually do it.

When accounts contradict each other

Ten people describing the same period will not agree on every detail, and that disagreement is not a flaw in the project. It is often the most honest part of it. The temptation is to smooth contradictions away in the final piece, but a log that records where accounts diverge lets you decide deliberately what to do with that divergence, rather than losing track of it and resolving it by accident.

• Note contradictions as they appear, without resolving them on the spot
• Decide separately what belongs in publication and what stays in the archive
• Keep consent records alongside the log, not in a separate system you might forget

None of this needs to be sophisticated software. A structured document, kept consistently, does the job. What matters is starting the habit on day one, since retrofitting a log onto ten completed interviews is far harder than building it as you go.