With greater interest, I read further that they recently inter­viewed four greats together: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Fats Domino. But they ran into some difficulty. Little Richard dominated the interview, and they had to tape the other three individually the next day. These museum curators were unaware of the dangers of the multiple-person interview. Less can equal more. Oral histories are most effective when the interviews are one-on-one.

How do I know this, and why is it of interest to me? Over the past ten years at Way Public Library (WPL) in Perrysburg (OH), I have conducted dozens of oral history interviews.

If you consult the March/April 2004 issue of Public Libraries you will find an article explaining our library’s initial experiences with this oral history project. This earlier piece reported the nuts and bolts of conducting interviews, such as preparing questions, tech­nical elements (including taping one person at a time), preserving the finished product, and general marketing of the project. This effort resulted in greater promise than we realized at the time. These interviews were transformed into a local history book.

History Series Sells Itself

When WPL started the Oral History Series in 2002, the objective was to record, on video, the memories of longtime community residents using Perrysburg as a frame of reference. Part of any public library’s mission is to provide and preserve information unique to the area it serves. WPL began to contact residents and request interviews. Sometimes it took persuasion, other times not. People will talk. After the interview, with the participant’s approval, these videos were added to the local history collection.

True stories can be fascinating. With the interviewees’ permis­sion, we began to share them with the community in print form as well. The tapes were transcribed, excerpted, and submitted to our local newspaper, the Perrysburg Messenger Journal. They struck a chord. Readers enjoyed the stories, and the project was able to advertise itself, inspiring others to come forward to record their memories. This led to transcribing full interviews and writing more comprehensive stories. This went on for many years, resulting in a stack of oral history tales.

Important to the oral history project was the opportunity to collect town and family photographs. I encouraged the inter­viewees to bring in any photos, as well as scrapbooks, clippings, letters, journals, or diaries. I copied or scanned everything I could get my hands on. Photos kindle people’s memories, and they would often hold and describe the pictures on camera. Borrow­ing and copying these photographs was also an economical way to build the local history collection. Over the years, hundreds of photographs were collected, many now accessible through our library’s website.

The level of detail in many people’s journals was surprising. For example, one woman consulted her journal of a road trip she took with her husband in the 1930s. They went to Canada to see (from a distance) the then–world famous Dionne Quintuplets. She had a record of each day: what they saw, where they roomed, what they ate, and how much money things cost. (The opera glasses were fifty cents, by the way.) There is no better history than a record of this type.

Another written record included a complete customer list from a retired bar­ber. He reflected on the names, which in­cluded many prominent and well-known village figures—many now passed—and fondly reminisced about them from his unique viewpoint. People leave more than their hair at the barbershop.

Transcribing Stories, Selecting Pictures

Eventually, it fell into place to collect these stories into a book. I remembered that Ardath Danford, who was the direc­tor of WPL in 1966 at the time of our city’s sesquicentennial, had written a book called The Perrysburg Story, bringing our then–150-year history to life. I even vis­ited her in retirement at her out-of-town home to tape her unique and important input. In like manner, our city’s bicenten­nial was approaching. As local history librarian, I thought WPL could again play an instrumental role in 2016 as we marked that great moment in our community.

I had interviewed a cross-section of people from our village over the years from many walks of life, all rich in local color. It didn’t hurt that I was a fifth-gen­eration local myself. I had the advantage of knowing many people, and they knew me, trusting me with their words, some even inviting me to their homes to tape them and show me their scrapbooks or family photo albums. It may have been bad manners, but on occasion I even man­aged to persuade people to loan pictures displayed on a bureau or hanging from a wall. Perrysburg’s first municipal judge, who I interviewed for the series and who would later write the book’s foreword, told me, “Richard, you are in the ideal position to do this project,” a point which further motivated me.

Oral histories came from hometown business owners, doctors, lawyers, realtors, and bankers. There were police officers, firefighters, educators, city and factory workers, and mothers who raised families. There were twenty-one World War II veterans, and their military experiences became part of many stories. I also interviewed representatives of local and civic groups such as a garden club, a boat club, and a board that led organized teenage recreation. And there were my favorite interviewees, the farmers. Even though I never lived on a farm, I enjoyed the Depression-era growing-up-on-a-farm stories the best.

In 2011, I started reviewing these videos one by one. I had transferred the early ones, originally recorded on VHS, to DVD some time earlier, so I was able to view them conveniently on a computer. All were interesting. Some people were livelier, some people told a better story, and others had better photographs. And photos were important. Although this was not a picture book, I still planned to enhance the book with photographs, and finding the best ones was challenging.

The photos ranged from the 1800s to the mid-twentieth century. Many were casual family photographs shot with Brownies or other inexpensive box cameras popular at the time. The subjects in the snapshots always seemed small. You couldn’t see faces well. To me, faces make the image. Many were not usable for book purposes. Baby, childhood, church, school, or wedding pictures were the best, as most were professionally shot. Service photos were also generally shot professionally and usually in portrait style, highly suitable for book purposes and fitting for stories featuring a veteran.

I vowed not to rush and meticulously worked through each interview. Transcrib­ing is tedious work. I had other library duties in the meantime. But I began to be­lieve in the value of the project and made the time, often on my own. Sometimes I would contact the person I was reviewing, reveal the book plan, and let them read what I wrote. I was able to incorporate new material, correct errors, and some­times get additional photographs. This revision process led to much improve­ment.

By 2012, I had fifty of the most promis­ing interviews written. I say written, but what I actually did was write down what the person said and organize the account into a readable manner, although I did not tinker with dialogue. I always made sure to put names in whenever I could. People like to read names, because they color the stories with real life. I limited each story to 1,600–2,000 words. I kept paragraphs short so they were pleasing to the eye while creating a sense of action. Although my voice was present, I kept it soft and succinct. I connected passages, inserted occasional personal observations for clarity, and periodically added a historical grace note to introduce or round out a particular tale or account.

Like with interviewing, I found that less is more when it comes to writing. I interviewed two farmers who had been lifelong friends, and they insisted on being recorded together. When it came time to write their chapter, I couldn’t get their stories to gel. It finally struck me to organize their stories separately, and that did the trick. These are things you learn as you go along. Even though they were re­corded together, they made two separate crackerjack chapters in the book.

I selected the photographs carefully. Some were cautiously cropped so as not to damage historical integrity of the im­age and all were retouched to be as clean and bright as possible. Efforts were made during the layout process to enlarge those photos that featured smaller im­ages. Content was identified and carefully captioned, making note of the year the photograph was taken or as close as it could be determined. History does not make sense without dates.

The photos were grouped together at the end of each story. I thought it would make browsing more emphatic than interspersed images throughout the text. There was always one contemporary photo of the person, often amusing for comparison with younger versions of the same. And you could see them on the same or opposite page.

Money, Money, Money

So how do you convert these elements into an actual book? Writing is easy, rais­ing money to publish a book, less easy. I wrote the whole thing on speculation and faith. I put together a prototype, assem­bled inexpensively by one of the big-box office stores. I showed it to Perrysburg’s mayor and he realized its historical impli­cations. He agreed with me that the book could play a complementary role in our city’s approaching bicentennial, perhaps even providing a focal point. With great foresight, he provided seed money from the city’s Municipal Development Fund, an account used for miscellaneous city ex­penditures, including historical purposes. Your public library’s city or town may have a similar fund.

Next, the Way Public Library Founda­tion & Friends (WPLFF) was approached. It was founded by a group of citizens who understood that a strong public library does not live by public funding alone. The foundation’s role is to advocate for library services and facilitate private donations for WPL use. The board was enthusiastic from the outset and declared their sup­port.

Once initial funding was secured, we needed to determine printing costs. With help from our local newspaper, the Perrysburg Messenger Journal, a company was located. The company estimated it would cost about $25,000 to print one thousand copies. So far, there was start-up money from the City of Perrysburg and other financial support from the WPLFF but other fundraising would be necessary.

Enter DAR and Other Contributors

In early 2013, the Fort Industry Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) from nearby Toledo presented me with the group’s Local Media Award for WPL’s oral history project. It proved to be divine intervention. I told them of my project to transpose these interviews to print. Officials of the group realized it had tremendous potential for a historic preservation grant offered by the Na­ tional Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR).

The NSDAR grants program was start­ed in 2010. Funding is awarded to support projects in local communities which ex­emplify the organization’s mission areas of historic preservation, education, and patriotism. Fifty are awarded each year. Public libraries are sitting in the catbird seat for this type of grant.

With the help of these DAR officials, we submitted an application for a historic preservation grant to the Special Grants Committee of the NSDAR in December 2013. In 2014, we were elated to hear that we had won a $10,000 matching grant to publish the book of local interviews, now titled Perrysburg Village Voices: Hometown Stories of the Past, and subtitled Celebrat­ing Perrysburg’s Bicentennial 1816–2016. It later turned out that it was the only grant awarded by the NSDAR in Ohio in 2014, and the largest donation received for the book’s publication. Quite a distinction for the Fort Industry Chapter DAR, the Ohio Society DAR, and WPL.

Fundraising gained traction. Along the way I had interviewed the Country Garden Club of Perrysburg, and their story had been included in the book. They provided a generous donation. Another civic group, Historic Perrysburg, also contributed. There were many military veterans in the book; Perrysburg Post 28 American Le­gion and VFW Post 6170 made donations. The First Federal Bank of the Midwest of Perrysburg added money to the cause.

Private benefactors came forward. Some were individuals who were in the book or who had family in it. And there were others who simply thought this local history book would be a huge boon for our community. Our grant match was made and then some. In fact, we had to close fundraising, facilitated by WPLFF, having reached our goal of $25,000. Not a bad problem to have, but in all modesty, that is Perrysburg.

The Rest of the Story

In the spring of 2014, the book was proofread. By mid-summer 2014 the page designer took over. Using Adobe InDesign, the book’s 204 pages with 175 photographs were assembled. The liaison with the printer was the Perrysburg Messenger Journal, whose graphic artist insured all file content was compatible for the printing process.

The City of Perrysburg’s computer systems administrator contributed to the dust jacket, a clever design of old and new Perrysburg city maps blended together, also with a black and gold color scheme.

By July 2015 the book was finalized. All that was left was to print the books and ship them to us. The one thousand books arrived at the end of July.

A book prerelease party was held at WPL for those interviewed in the book and their families. Benefactors were also invited. It was a huge success, drawing 250 people, including past and present city mayors. Many Fort Industry Chapter DAR members were also in attendance. There was speechmaking and much socializing. At least three hundred books went out the door.

The general release of Village Voices was held at Perrysburg’s Harrison Rally Day, an annual festival commemorat­ing William Henry Harrison’s victory at nearby Fort Meigs in the War of 1812. The city holds a huge street fair. Nearly one hundred books were sold at the WPLFF display booth. It was the perfect prelude to our bicentennial. More books were sold at WPL and other local venues, as well as online from the WPLFF website.

Time has passed since this project began. Some of the individuals who participated in these oral histories are no longer with us but forever suspended in time, just as they were when their voices were recorded and their minds alive with memories. Preserving the past and mak­ing it live is a lovely task.

Being a “local” local history librarian worked to my advantage, but any public librarian could do this, too. Public libraries are ideal platforms for creating historical works. These archives will add cultural en­richment and prove useful and interesting to a wide variety of patrons. What I did, you can do at your public library, too.

The post FEATURE | Quintuplets and a Barber’s Memory: It’s All Local History to Me! first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

I am specifically interested in how Minecraft can now be used as an educational and historical tool. I will be the first to admit that I am not a Minecraft expert, nor have I even played the game. My nine-year-old brother has tried explaining it to me a few times, but as he explains, all I can think about is how it looks like the old 8-bit games I used to play as a child (e.g., Donkey Kong and Duck Hunt).The more I have paid attention to the game and how it works, however, the more I realize it can be used to construct cities and towns to be used as virtual historical tours. Can you imagine taking a virtual walkthrough of your hometown back in the 1940s or 1950s? I can only assume it would be a very surreal experience.

I recently attended the Texas Library Association Conference in Houston, Texas, and a very innovative session was given on using Minecraft as a historical tool. The city of Sugarland, Texas, partnered up with Techno Chaos, a local information technology group, to see how they could incorporate Minecraft as an educational tool in their school system. The result was genius! The information technology group, who are all very savvy and familiar with the game, pitched the idea of using the game to construct what Sugarland looked like in the 1950s.

The school district loved the idea and ran with it. Historical photos of the city were collected and passed around to many of the elementary and middle school classrooms within the school district. Each photo allowed a different class the opportunity to come up with their Minecraft version of that image. The concept was easy: Use the historical photos as a blueprint to construct a virtual simulation of the buildings and streets of Sugarland in the 1950s. What better way to incorporate history and gaming by way of Minecraft? Minecraft has proven to not only be a fun game but a tool that has “transcended into real-life like no other game before, having a positive impact on key areas as diverse as urban development, mapping, history and the arts.”[2]

Minecraft is successful because the game is flexible. Any group, school, or library can manipulate the game to suit their educational or entertainment needs. According to Daniel Short, a professor of environmental science at Robert Morris University, “It is a game changer. Minecraft is now a major educational concern.”[3] It has been proven to be a successful educational tool for children of all ages.

So instead of thinking of Minecraft as merely a game that is a waste of time, think of it as a tool that can successfully educate children across the country that can prepare them for specific areas in engineering, history, and the arts.

References

[1] David Crookes, “Minecraft is much more than ‘Lego online’ – it’s a creative classroom tool,” February 18, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

The post Minecraft as a Historical Education Tool first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

On an international level, former librarians in Tokyo, Japan are collecting and preserving historical maps that plot out U.S. air raid damage from World War II. One of the former librarians, Gen Yamazaki has both a professional and personal connection to these maps. As a library professional during the war, he was responsible for guiding patrons to safe locations during air raid strikes. On more than one occasion, he witnessed death, tragedy, and loss of land and personal property due to these air raids.

In an effort to preserve these rare documents, he also hopes that young people will “see the discovery of such maps as a ‘milestone’ toward peace and a ‘lesson’ about the misery of war.” [1] Throughout political and social changes, history is being created within our very communities and within our library collections without even realizing it. Future generations of patrons will form their own conclusions of their community’s history based on these documents.

In my own library, we are currently working toward organizing and preparing documents for digitization so that members of the public can have equitable access to newspapers, maps, photographs, and other documents that give insight into their collective history. As anyone who has performed genealogy or local history research can attest, there are often realms of the past that we did not know about, have forgotten, or simply do not understand. Nevertheless, it is imperative to determine how this type of local-level information can be stored and made accessible.

While my library’s local history collection clearly differs from the local historical map collection that Mr. Yamazaki is preserving, it is important to for professional librarians to understand the significance of community stories and histories, as well as determine where the public library fits into the conversation.

^[1] Iwakiri, Nozomi. “Ex-librarians Collect Tokyo Air Raid Maps in Effort to Promote Peace.” The Japan Times. (2015). Web. 22 Nov. 2015. http://bit.ly/1I8l63

The post Preserving History first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

According to the organization’s website, StoryCorps’s mission is, “We do this to remind one another of our shared humanity, strengthen and build the connections between people, teach the value of listening, and weave into the fabric of our culture the understanding that every life matters. At the same time, we will create an invaluable archive of American voices and wisdom for future generations.”

For 10 years now, the nonprofit organization has accumulated over 45,000 interviews of everyday people, people who seem ordinary but often have extraordinary tales to tell. Each interview is about 40 minutes and at the end of it, one CD is given to the participants. Another CD is filed with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The goal of the organization is to preserve as many stories as possible for historical and cultural purposes.

Currently there are story booths in Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco, California; and Atlanta, Georgia. At each location there are several community partners that assist in the process, including libraries. In addition, there is a mobile booth, an Airstream trailer outfitted with a recording studio that travels the country year-round collecting stories. The website has the latest information on the next stop of the mobile booth tour. Do-it-yourself kits are also available. There are even directions on how to do a self-guided interview.

Due to the success and popularity of the organization, it has now evolved into more than just recorded stories. The recordings have inspired the publication of books such as Listening is an Act of Love, Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps, and All There is: Love Stories from StoryCorps. Also, there is a DVD of animated shorts created based on some of the organization’s most beloved stories. Such shorts include a heartwarming conversation between a mother and her twelve-year-old son who has Asperger’s Syndrome and the twenty-seven-year love story of Danny and Annie.

Last year was the fifth anniversary of The National Day of Listening, which StoryCorps created and sponsors. It’s usually held the day after Thanksgiving. The hope is that the event’s timing allows for dialogue between loved ones gathered during that particular holiday weekend. According to the website, “The National Day of Listening is a day to honor a loved one through listening. It’s the least expensive but most meaningful gift you can give.”

To learn more about partnering with StoryCorps, check here.

The post StoryCorps: Another Institution that Values Stories first appeared on Public Libraries Online.