This "DNI Explainer" originally appeared in our newsletter The Mountain Light , in the Winter, 2005 issue.

Acronyms. They're everywhere. I don't know who began using initials for the full words. I do know that FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) never met a government program he didn't like, and that pretty much all of those programs where noted in publications by their acronyms. I will let those who remember and who have studied American History in the 1930s think of the numerous abbreviations; I came here today to neither praise nor bury Roosevelt. But it seems like since the New Deal, we, as a country, have never met a phrase that we couldn't acronym. (And I know acronym is not a verb, but it was shorter than using, "create a multiple-letter abbreviation for.")

We at the IOHC (Idaho Oral History Center) have developed our share of acronyms. Instead of delving into the laundry list of ours, I want to feature one in particular: DNI. DNI stands for Do Not Include. Of our nearly3,200-plus interviews, over 500 of them (504 to be exact) fall into this category. Interviews are in this basket for three primary reasons. The primary two reasons are either the interview lacks a release form or lacks historical depth. A few interviews are restricted, meaning the narrator decided to restrict access to the entire recording for a number of years or forever.

Why would we gather or receive interviews with no legal release form? Well, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the interviewer forgot to get the form signed at the end of interview, and when he or she sent the form to the narrator, the narrator never returned the signed document. Sometimes after the interview was conducted, the narrator refused to sign the form. And sometimes we decide to accept donated interviews without release forms, with the hope that we would try get them signed later. Whatever the reason these interviews cannot be released to the public.

Another reason, lack of historical depth, denotes a problem with oral history done in the past and today. These are usually short interviews, less than 30 minutes, meaning either the interviewer or narrator (or both) didn't put forth the effort to create a quality, primary historical document. These interviews have added to one of the major criticisms of oral history: untrained oral historians help to create too much unusable information, which frustrates historians and interested individuals.

So, what can we do about these DNIs? Well, for those interviews lacking release forms, we have sent out letters, explaining to narrators or their next of kin that we have their interviews and would like them to sign and send the release form back to us for inclusion

To quickly locate a particular name in this inventory simply use your browser's "Find" function under the "Edit" command at the top of the screen.

If you have any questions about this inventory, e-mail the Oral Historian.