Free Webinar on Conducting Oral Histories

Talking to relatives about their lives is one of the best ways to learn more information, especially great stories, about your family.  The Jewish Women's Archive is offering a free Webinar on how to lead an oral history project.  It will be primarily geared to working with students, but the description also mentions working with your community, so I'm sure the techniques discussed will be useful for almost any genealogist.

The Webinar will take place twice on Thursday, November 6, to accommodate more people's schedules.  You can attend from 10:00–11:00 a.m. or 5:00–6:00 p.m., U.S. Pacific time.  The registration forms have a handy little pull-down list that shows what times those are in pretty much any time zone.

Audio Heirlooms

Do you have family heirlooms of the audible variety?  That would be some kind of audio recording, such as of a family event, an oral history interview of a grandparent, or maybe a singing performance by your brother.  As with photographs, these are unique items that should be identified and saved to share with future generations.

It used to be that cassette tapes were often the way these were shared.  I have two cassettes of my aunt's uncles and aunt discussing family history and other relatives.  I even have a cassette with recordings of several of my voice recitals.  Nowadays, however, the most common way to share audio is by electronic files.  If you have old recordings, you should probably consider transferring them to a digital format and then sharing them on CD's or DVD's with family members.  Recently the New York Times published a three-part series on archiving family history; the first part discussed preserving audio, including important things to think about when converting analog to digital.

Some audio recordings are national heirlooms.  The May–June 2013 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine included an article titled "Saving Our Sounds."  The National Recording Registry includes musical, spoken word, and natural sound recordings that span 150 years of our history.  The complete list of titles in the National Recording Registry is available online and includes such things as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Fanny Brice singing "Second Hand Rose", Scott Joplin playing ragtime, and Ishi, the last speaker of the Yahi language, singing and telling traditional stories.  Some of the recordings themselves are online also.

If you don't yet have audio heirlooms to share with family members, there are some resources to help you start.  The StoryCorps oral history project allows you to record yourself and/or a relative, gives you a copy of the recording on a DVD, and archives your recording in the Library of Congress American Folklife Center.  And this coming Wednesday, August 7, Marian Pierre-Louis will give a presentation on conducting oral history interviews and sharing them, through Legacy Family Tree Webinars.

I wish I had a recording of my father's swing band performing on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour.  But if they didn't record Gladys Knight (the winner) that night, they sure as heck didn't record my father.

British Oral History Project

Niamh Dillon, a British Library staff member, is researching a Ph.D. thesis at Goldsmiths College, University of London, on migration within the British Empire in the 20th century, and particularly on the lives of British people living in India in the period leading up to independence from Britain. She hopes to record interviews with people who experienced life in India before independence, and their subsequent experiences after moving to Britain post-independence.

If you or someone you know is willing to help her with a recorded interview, please contact Dillon by e-mail at n.dillon@gold.ac.uk or niamhdillon@hotmail.com, or by post to Niamh Dillon, National Life Stories, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.

All recordings will be conducted in accordance with the ethical principles laid down by the Oral History Society. With the interviewee's consent, the recordings will be archived at the British Library, where Dillon has been managing oral history projects since 2003.

StoryCorps Oral History Project

I recently heard about a U.S. program that allows people to record and share their stories.  StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit oral history project that has collected and archived more than 30,000 interviews from more than 60,000 participants since 2003.  Each interview is recorded on a CD given to the participants and is archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.  It has a weekly broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition.

StoryCorps has three permanent locations around the country (New York City, Atlanta, San Francisco) where you can go to record your interview.  It has a mobile recording trailer that travels to other locations.  It is also possible for groups to arrange their own recording sessions.

The Web site has a question generator to help you plan your interview ahead of time.  There are links to information about StoryKits and do-it-yourself instructions, if you want to make your recordings at home.  There's even an iPhone app.

StoryCorps' mission is to "provide Americans of all background and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives."  How many stories would you like to preserve from your family and friends?  How many stories have already been lost?