My esteemed colleague Wendy is about to embark upon her interview research and asked me for more detail about recording and transcribing interviews, so here’s what I’ve learned:

• Invest in a good digital recorder – mine is a Sony ICD-P520 and cost about $52 at Amazon. It comes with software that you load onto your laptop and a cable to upload your digital recordings. Once you’ve uploaded the interview, you can translate it to a .WAV file, which can be sent via email to a transcriptionist.
• If you are conducting the interview in person, make sure there is minimal background noise. If you can find a quiet room, that’s the best. Place the recorder between you on a table and don’t fuss with it once you’ve started the recording. If you have to be in a hotel lobby or other noisy place, adjust the microphone sensitivity setting to “Low” or “dictation.” Make sure you don’t “talk over” the other person as they answer your questions.
• If you need to conduct the interview over the phone, you can buy an adapter that connects a land line phone with the recorder. I used a TRX-20 recording interface. You need to have a phone that has a receiver connected with a cord – it doesn’t work with a cordless phone. So I sent my husband to Radio Shack to get a cheap phone that worked well.
• You may want to transcribe the interview yourself if you are a good typer and have patience. I don’t have the patience, so I had a professional transcriber, Marcy at A Better Type (better@san.rr.com) in San Diego transcribe them. They charge $20/hour and have more suggestions regarding making good recordings. They sell digital recorders too (Olympus).
• Test everything out before you do your interviews.  You don’t want to think you are recording and find out you didn’t record the interview.