During her long career at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum as its oral historian, Linsey Lee has interviewed over 1,000 Islanders, giving voice to their lives and stories.

The interview that got her started, done for an Irish folklore course in college, was with Craig Kingsbury of Vineyard Haven, an Island character who inspired Robert Shaw’s legendary role as Quint the shark chaser in Jaws.

On Friday evening at the museum, Ms. Lee takes the stage to be interviewed herself, by longtime friend and NPR correspondent Mara Liasson. The talk is entitled 35 Years of Listening. It begins at 5:30 p.m.

After her interview with Mr. Kingsbury, titled I Didn’t Bring Any Skunks to the Island as he has often been accused of bringing the first skunk to the Vineyard, Ms. Lee was hooked on the format.

In her three-volume series Vineyard Voices, a must for every Island home, the oral histories are written down. Each book tells the story of the Vineyard through the men and women who made their mark here, from homemaker Mildred Wadsworth, who was nearly 100 years old at the time of the interview done in 1995, to Hollis Smith talking about the last heath hen named Booming Ben.

“I am constantly awed by the wealth of wisdom and humor each person has to share,” Ms. Lee wrote in an introduction to the first volume of oral histories.

The life stories mostly reveal everyday life on the Island.

“Occasionally, when I call to ask someone of the would be willing to do an interview with me, they will say, “But I haven’t done anything special.” I need to explain that what I really want to hear is stories of everyday life — what games they played as children, how they used to conduct household chores, their hopes and dreams,” she wrote in the same introduction.

Taken as a whole, however, the individual tales become large in scope, a timeless window into the soul of the Vineyard.