Читать книгу Start & Run a Personal History Business - Jennifer Campbell - Страница 44

Stories are being gathered all over the world. This list is just a sample of the hundreds of institutions and projects devoted to preserving the personal histories and reminiscences of everyday people and specific groups:

• The Memory Project: This project collects firsthand counts and digitized artifacts and memorabilia of WWII veterans. It is an initiative of the Historica-Dominion Institute, a Canadian charitable organization that promotes the history, heritage, and stories of Canada.

• Pier 21: Canada’s Immigration Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has an informative, interesting website, and the museum itself is a fascinating place to visit. Between 1928 and 1971, more than 1.5 million immigrants, war brides, displaced people, evacuee children, and Canadian military personnel passed through its doors. Pier 21 has a wonderful collection of more than 2,000 stories, 600 oral histories, books, films, photos, and documents about the immigration experience and WWII. It also offers one-on-one research help.

• Ellis Island: This museum in New York has extensive resources including a Family Immigration History Center. Much like Canada’s Pier 21, it provides visitors with assistance in investigating “immigration history, family documentation and genealogical exploration.”

• Vermont Folklife Center: This facility has thousands of recordings, films, photographs, and manuscripts, and on its site you can access excellent Field Guides (Digital Audio Field Recording Equipment, Field Recording in the Digital Age, Digital Editing, and Resources on Preservation).

• StoryCorps: This organization is part of the American Folk Life Center. It is one of the largest oral history projects, with more than 50,000 everyday people’s recorded stories, many of which are recorded through the project’s mobile and semi-permanent Story Booths. As described on its website, StoryCorps is “ … a nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.” Stories are archived in the Library of Congress. Check out the site for lots of resources including a do-it-yourself guide.

• American Folk Life Center: The American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress strives to preserve folklife — “the songs we sing, the stories we tell, the crafts we make.” It is home to StoryCorps (above) and the Veterans History Project, which “collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans.”

• Family History Centers: Branches of the massive Family History Library in Salt Lake City, run by the Church of Latter-Day Saints, Family History Centers offer free assistance to locate ancestors, and their website, www.familysearch.org, has online resources and classes. It will be mainly of interest to genealogists, but it’s an organization you should be familiar with.