Preliminary version 0.1 · October 2026

ABER and Oral History: Comparison Rubric

Name: ABER and Oral History: Comparison Rubric
Creator: Stephen Mucher
Published: 2026-10
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Preliminary Rubric (Automated Biographical Elicitation and Re-tell)

Stephen Mucher, Ph.D. · Cornell Tech · Fall 2026

This is the preliminary version of the rubric. It consolidates the disciplinary practices of oral history in a form that facilitates comparison with auto-autobiography. It holds 33 criteria in four categories. Each criterion has a short descriptor and a prompt that can be put to any agent, human or machine.

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Elicit 12 criteria

How the inquiry is prepared and conducted

No.	Criterion	Prompt
E1	Inclusive Offer rationale to document person/story over others	How does the agent determine whose lives are documented, and on what grounds? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Preparation 4; Ethics, Collaboration; Core Principles 7 AHA Profile (diversity of human experience)
E2	Trained Meet recognized training obligations for interviewer	How does the agent meet recognized training obligations for conducting the inquiry? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Preparation 1, 8; Ethics, Preparation & Communication (opening paragraph)
E3	Scoped Pre-plan and define depth and sequence of inquiry	How does the agent prepare for the inquiry and define the scope and sequence of the live interview? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 4; Ethics, Preparation & Communication 4; Best Practices, Preparation 3, 6, 8 NCHS 4A AHA 5 (research strategies)
E4	Transparent Communicate purpose and process of inquiry openly	How does the agent communicate the purposes, processes, risks, biases, politics, and power dynamics of the inquiry at every stage? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 6; Ethics, Preparation & Communication 2 and Collaboration; Best Practices, Preparation 5a, 5b; Social Justice, Before the Interview: Project Background Information
E5	Consent-based Obtain, co-construct, renew, & honor narrator’s consent	How does the agent obtain, renew, and honor the narrator's informed consent at each stage of the inquiry, including the right to refuse an answer or withdraw? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 6, 9; Ethics, Preparation & Communication 1; Best Practices, Preparation 3, 5d and Interviewing 4a; Social Justice, Before the Interview: Informed Consent, Rolling Consent
E6	Responsive Balance scope/structure with adaptive improvisation	How does the agent decide, and on what criteria, whether to pursue ideas the narrator raises that depart from the pre-planned structure? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 4; Best Practices, Interviewing 4b, 4c
E7	Accurate Verify asserted facts /address errors & inconsistencies	How does the agent respond to assertions that may not match verified timelines, established contexts, or the narrator's own earlier statements? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Access & Use 3c NCHS 2D; 4C AHA 4 (credibility of sources)
E8	Candid Encourage safety & press beyond superficial response	How does the agent press beyond superficial responses and work with the narrator toward candid information of lasting value? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Interviewing 4b, 4d
E9	Protective Anticipate and prevent potential harm from encounter	How does the agent protect the narrator from harm arising in the encounter: revisited trauma, abuse of a power differential, misunderstanding, or political disempowerment? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 7, 8; Ethics, Collaboration; Social Justice, Project Planning: Pre-Protection Planning
E10	Relational Engage the narrator as a full person	How does the agent recognize and engage the narrator as a full person rather than a source to be leveraged for academic or commercial gain? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 4, 5; Best Practices, Preparation 5, 6; Ethics, Collaboration; Social Justice, Project Planning: Outreach/Relationship Building; After the Interview: Sustained Relationships AHA 2 (empathy)
E11	Collaborative Ensure co-construction and co-ownership of the inquiry	How does the agent ensure ongoing co-ownership of the process and outcome of the inquiry? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 4, 6; Ethics, Preparation & Communication 3; Social Justice, Before the Interview: Shared Power, Participatory Power
E12	Community-engaged Involve and build from relevant stakeholder networks	How does the agent meet its obligation to recognize the narrator as a member of communities and to engage those communities in the inquiry? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 5, 10; Best Practices, Preparation 9; Social Justice, Introduction; Project Planning: Outreach/Relationship Building; Oral History: Defined

Re-tell 7 criteria

How the inquiry results are described

No.	Criterion	Prompt
R1	Faithful Discern narrator's meaning using appropriate context	How does the agent keep the account true to the words and meanings the narrator offered, without quoting out of context or contorting the original meaning? Anchors OHA statements Ethics, Using Oral Sources; Best Practices, Access & Use 3a, 3b; Social Justice, After the Interview: Interview Notes, Time Log, Transcripts
R2	Documented Cite supporting material using disciplinary conventions	How does the agent reveal, embed, or cite supporting and explanatory material in the account, in keeping with disciplinary norms? Anchors OHA statements Ethics, Using Oral Sources; Best Practices, Access & Use 3e, 3f NCHS 3E; 4F AHA 2 (acknowledges sources); Profile (citation)
R3	Accountable Own and document responsibility for claims	How does the agent explain, demonstrate, and document responsibility for the claims made in the account? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 10; Best Practices, Access & Use 3c; Social Justice, Introduction (extended accountability)
R4	Reviewable Reveal openly method of inquiry for peer examination	How does the agent use disciplinary conventions to explain its process and communicate its conclusions, so that its method is open to review by trained peers? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Access & Use 3, 3d; Ethics, Using Oral Sources AHA Profile (peer review); 4 (how arguments were constructed); 5 (well-supported narratives)
R5	Tentative Qualify claims, hedge language, invite reexamination	How does the agent qualify assertions of historical fact and signal that its claims remain open to reexamination? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 3; Best Practices, Access & Use 3c NCHS 3H AHA 3 (provisional nature of knowledge); 4 (revise when new evidence requires)
R6	Protective Assess harm impact from the account and its exposure	How does the agent protect the narrator from harm arising in the account: loss of privacy, libel, stereotype reinforcement, or misrepresentation? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 8, 10; Ethics, Stewardship; Best Practices, Access & Use 3a; Social Justice, After the Interview: Protective Considerations
R7	Co-Authorship Share ownership, editing, and authority with the narrator	How does the agent share authority over the account with living narrators positioned as co-inquirers, including how it is reviewed, named, described, and approved? Anchors OHA statements Ethics, Preparation & Communication 3, Collaboration, and Stewardship; Best Practices, Access & Use 2e; Social Justice, After the Interview: Interpretation

Interpret 9 criteria

What historical thinking practices are applied in elicitation and re-tell

No.	Criterion	Prompt
T1	Questions Framing Explain values behind selected lines of inquiry	How does the agent determine which questions, out of all possible questions, are most valuable for a given inquiry, and show how those questions reflect the historiography? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Preparation 6, 8 and Interviewing 4 NCHS 4A; 3I AHA 5 (substantive, open-ended questions)
T2	Determines Significance* Explain criteria determining historical importance Described at both stages	How does the agent determine the relative importance of historical phenomena? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 4; Best Practices, Interviewing 4c, 4d NCHS 3D AHA 1 (particularity of past lives, scale of human experience)
T3	Establishes Chronology Select events and order them in time	How does the agent select events and place them in temporal order? Anchors NCHS 1C; 1F; 1G AHA Profile (continuity and change over time)
T4	Explores cause/contingency Weigh the impact of antecedent events	How does the agent determine which antecedent events are causes, weigh the relative force of each on a later event or person, and identify which events proved critical to those that followed? Anchors NCHS 3C; 3G; 5C AHA 3 (multiple causes of complex events)
T5	Sources Determine a source's origins, credibility, purpose	How does the agent establish the credibility and purpose of a source? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Access & Use 3c NCHS 2A AHA 4 (credibility, position, perspective, relevance)
T6	Contextualizes* Determine how events, people, time frame narrative Described at both stages	How does the agent determine which events, places, people, or other primary and secondary accounts are relevant? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 3; Oral History: Defined; Best Practices, Preparation 6 and Access & Use 3d, 3e NCHS 4D AHA 1 (gather and contextualize)
T7	Decodes Establish the source’s literal meaning (in context)	How does the agent establish the literal meaning of what the narrator says, and determine which context is needed to establish it? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Interviewing 4b; Social Justice, Project Planning: Language and Translation NCHS 2B AHA 4 (decode the historical record)
T8	Considers Perspective Recognize how agents reach differing viewpoints	How does the agent recognize that other agents, coming to the topic with different life experiences, would hold different perspectives? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 7; Ethics, Collaboration; Social Justice, Project Planning: Self-Reflection and Self-Interrogation NCHS 2F; 3B; 3F AHA 3 (multiple perspectives)
T9	Reconciles Inconsistencies Identify and explain gaps and contradictions	How does the agent identify and explain missing or conflicting information, including inconsistencies within the narrator's own account? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Access & Use 3c NCHS 4D AHA 3 (welcome contradictory data); 4 (incomplete, complex, contradictory record)

Retain 5 criteria

How the record is kept, described, accessed, and owned

No.	Criterion	Prompt
K1	Enduring Plan for long-term care of the record	How does the agent record and store the record in forms that anticipate future audiences, format obsolescence, and long-term care? Anchors OHA statements Best Practices, Preparation 2, 7 and Preservation 1, 2a to 2c, 3a; Archiving, Preservation and Collaboration 2, 4 AHA Profile (preserves collective memory)
K2	Traceable Show chain of custody from primary to secondary accounts	How does the agent plan for an archive that holds both the primary account (the original recording and transcript) and the secondary account (the re-telling), and tie the second to the first? Anchors OHA statements Archiving, Preservation; Ethics, Collaboration; Best Practices, Access & Use 3f NCHS 4F AHA 2 (an interpretive account created from surviving evidence)
K3	Catalogued Attach appropriate metadata and context	How does the agent attach the metadata and context a future reader needs to understand how the record was made? Anchors OHA statements Ethics, Stewardship; Best Practices, Interviewing 2, Preservation 3b, 3c and Access & Use 1; Archiving, Metadata and Description and Collaboration 5
K4	Accessible Offer rationale and implementation plan for record access	How does the agent determine who may access and use the record, under what restrictions, and with what regard for the narrator's wishes and privacy? Anchors OHA statements Core Principles 8, 9; Ethics, Stewardship; Best Practices, Access & Use 2a to 2d; Archiving, Access and Collaboration 6, 7; Social Justice, Before the Interview: Privacy and Access AHA Profile (make the past accessible)
K5	Co-owned Recognize shared rights in the record	How does the agent recognize the rights of the narrator and community in the record, including copyright, transcript, and translation? Anchors OHA statements Archiving, Ownership and Rights Management; Ethics, Collaboration; Social Justice, Before the Interview: Participatory Power 2, 4, 5; After the Interview: Preservation

Conventions

Agent: Always singular, with no assumption about kind. The agent may be human or machine.
Narrator: The person interviewed, in the OHA's term.
Stage nouns: Elicit prompts refer to the inquiry, Re-tell prompts to the account, Keeping prompts to the record.
Reading: The rubric is mainly descriptive: each prompt asks how. The Setup tab also gives a binary reading that asks whether.
Stages: Each criterion is described once. Significance and Contextualization are described at both the Elicit and Re-tell stages.
Unmet criteria: Where an agent cannot address a criterion at all, the gap is itself a finding.
Links: Each anchor links to its statement page. The OHA pages have no link targets for individual numbered items, so OHA links open the statement or its section.

Sources and short forms

Source	Short form	Cited by
OHA Core Principles	Core Principles	Paragraph number, 1 to 10
OHA Statement on Ethics	Ethics	Section heading, plus point number in Preparation & Communication
Oral History Best Practices	Best Practices	Section heading and item, such as Interviewing 4b
Archiving Oral History (2019)	Archiving	Section heading, plus item number in Collaboration
Guidelines for Social Justice Oral History Work (2022)	Social Justice	Stage and subsection heading
Oral History: Defined	Oral History: Defined	Title only; the page has no sections
NCHS Historical Thinking Standards (1996)	NCHS column	Standard number and letter, such as 3H
AHA History Discipline Core (2016)	AHA column	Core competency 1 to 6 in published order; Profile is the Discipline Profile and Core Concepts

Cite

Mucher, Stephen. 2026. "ABER and Oral History: Comparison Rubric." Preliminary version 0.1, October 2026. Digital Life Initiative, Cornell Tech. https://auto-autobiography.stephenmucher.org/rubric.html