Oral history goes digital

By ANN GIBBONS
Freeman staff
agibbons@freemanonline.com

For most people, history is just a jumble of dates – July 4, 1776, July 14, 1789, Nov. 22, 1963, April 4, 1968* - forgotten as soon as the test is over.

But, people also love stories, and oral histories are a fascinating way to tell the story of the Hudson River Valley.

That’s why four partner organizations, each with a different mission, have received a $430,000 National Leadership Grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, to help communities turn their archival oral histories into documents that can then be shared across the vast digital spectrum.

“We are, of course, thrilled to receive the grant,” said Tessa Killian, associate director of the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council, located in Highland, which is lead agency and partner in the grant. “The grant is extremely competitive, a major award and four years in the planning for us,” she said.

The grant’s concept is relatively simple; its application somewhat more complicated, said Eileen McAdam, director of the Sound and Story Project, based in Stone Ridge, which is partner and project manager of the grant.

Greater Hudson Heritage Network, located in Elmsford, and the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist College are the two other grant partners.

The grant will enable the council and the Sound and Story Project to bring Hudson Valley voices of the past into the high-tech present with a new project: “Voices of the Hudson Valley: Bringing New Technology to Old Stories for 21st Century Audiences.”

“We want to get those wonderful oral histories off the shelves of the holding organization, such as an historical society, and get them out to a wider audience,” McAdam said.

“Our goal is to get those cassette tapes, that libraries and historical societies have painstakingly recorded, and make them accessible by computer, telephone, iPad or iPhone,” Killian chimed in.