Entries tagged as ‘oral history’
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Monday’s Link Roundup this week has items to appeal to both your heart and your head. For your heart be sure to check-out Pittsburgher has been searching for the woman who helped raise him. And for your head you’ll want to read Two Rules for a Successful Presentation.
- Terkel Coming Online. “If someone was an important figure in American culture in the 20th century, chances are he or she was interviewed by Studs Terkel…Under a deal signed Monday between the Chicago History Museum and the Library of Congress, tapes of those interviews will be digitally preserved and given new life online.”
- Historical Canadian Census, 1851 -1916 Fully Indexed and Searchable. “The Canadian Census Collection represents the first time ever that the 1851/2, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1906, 1911 and 1916 censuses will be fully searchable online and fully indexed in one place. Now people across Canada and around the world can research their Canadian roots faster and easier than ever before.”
- Two Rules for a Successful Presentation. “Most presentations go bad because the presenter didn’t prepare well enough in two ways. In fact, so important are these two classic errors that I’m going to elevate them to The Two Rules for Preparing a Successful Presentation.”
- How to Get a Decorative Family Tree Poster. “So you’ve gathered a few generations’ worth of names and dates, and now you want to display your family tree on your wall. Nowadays you have more options than ever—from free to pricey and do-it-yourself to full-service—for creating a decorative family tree poster. Here are some that we’ve come across:”
- Who Owns Your Family History Story? “I am not talking about copyrights but rather, how much of your family story belongs to you? How much should you tell? What stories should remain unwritten?”
- Encounters with the past. “The past is not as long ago as we think, says Stuart Lutz. Such major events as Amelia Earhart’s flying career or the disastrous General Slocum fire of 1904 seem impossibly remote to us moderns…Lutz has met those people. He’s the author of “The Last Leaf: Voices of History’s Last-Known Survivors,” an oral history of 39 people who were the last survivor or eyewitness of historical events.”
- For 13 years, Pittsburgher has been searching for the woman who helped raise him. “Joe was only 5 when Helen left her employment with the family, but she’s alive in his memory. Like Miss Skeeter, the young white woman in The New York Times best-seller “The Help” who yearned to reconnect with the black maid who had raised her, Joe longed to find Helen. “I have this enormous emotional feeling about how important she was to me. She was the font of everything wonderful in my life,” he said. So, 13 years ago, from his home in Olympia, Wash., Joe began searching for her.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: family tree, genealogy, Life stories, link roundup, oral history, searchable historical Canadian census, Studs Terkel, successful presentations
In this Monday’s Link Roundup I have two favorites and both have to do with those who’ve experienced combat. In One Pilot’s War the letters home of a WWII fighter pilot gives an immediacy and authenticity to the experience of war in the Pacific. Bringing Home Veterans Stories to the Stage looks at an innovative theatrical production that uses oral history to capture the voices of veterans returning home.
**And don’t forget to vote on my poll: How long have you been a personal historian? Click here to vote.**
- Two Very Different Approaches to Personal Stories. “What kind of story could you tell about yourself based on the contents of your pocket, backpack, handbag, or wallet? That’s the question that the Pocketology Field Research Unit explores on Stories You Haven’t Heard.”
- Bringing Home Veterans Stories to the Stage. “The transition to the battlefield and back home again is a long and, at times, bumpy road for our war veterans. A new interdisciplinary arts and creativity project at the University of Kentucky brings a voice to these experiences. Through a unique collaboration between UK’s Department of Theatre, Veterans Resource Center and Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, the stories of the veterans among the UK campus community will come to life in a new documentary drama “Bringing It Home: Voices of Student Veterans.”
- The Great American Scrapbook Conventions. “Whether you are an experienced scrapper or just want to learn more about preserving family stories, the Great American Scrapbook Conventions are for you. These events inspire and help you document memories for future generations to enjoy. You are guaranteed to leave more energized and knowledgeable than when you arrived!”
- Multimedia Storytelling Reaches Technological Heights. “How do you tell stories with images” and then “how do you drive consumers to view your work” were the two underlying questions of this fast-paced and never boring presentation-style workshop. Storm’s answer is to create complex multimedia projects using the documentary photograph as the root.”
- Lasting Memory. “Oral histories give the terminally ill a chance to record their life stories. When 69-year-old Silvia Marie Clark Linville of Grants Pass found out two weeks ago that she had terminal, fast-spreading cancer, she got a gift from an unexpected source. As he has done for many dying people, Gary Halliburton gave her an hour to talk over the fun, painful and sometimes glorious parts of her life, which he recorded on high-definition digital video, with many copies on DVD for her children and their eventual children, who — not yet being born — will have no memories of their grandmother, but will get to “meet” her through this oral history.”
- Building Credibility: 11 Ways to Show You’re a Professional. “Winning a job in the freelance world often comes down to who is the more credible and more professional candidate. It’s a sad fact, but many freelancers are inconsistent with their customer service and underwhelming with the quality of their work.”
- One Pilot’s War. “Several months ago, the basement at my mother’s house flooded. As we cleaned up after the water receded, we found several boxes that had not been opened in many years. In these boxes were letters sent by my grandfather during World War Two . . . I have recently begun sorting and transcribing these letters so that they can be preserved for my family and for anyone else that my have an interest in how World War Two looked to one American pilot. As I work my way through these letter I will be posting them here along with the many pictures my grandfather took throughout the war.”
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Tagged: link roundup, oral history, scrapbooking, terminally ill, veterans, WW II
I had a lot fun putting together this Monday’s Link Roundup. There’s just so much great stuff out there. This week is no exception. For a look at the fast changing pace of media over the past 120, don’t miss Retro Media: Memory (and Memories) Lost. If you’re looking for a good chuckle, stop by the Top 10 Funniest Google Suggest Results.
And don’t forget to vote on my poll: How long have you been a personal historian? Click here to vote.
- The [Oxford] Handbook of Oral History. [Hardback. 608 pages. Publication date, Oct. 2010. $150.00 ] “The Oxford Handbook of Oral History brings together forty authors on five continents to address the evolution of oral history, the impact of digital technology, the most recent methodological and archival issues, and the application of oral history to both scholarly research and public presentations. The volume is addressed to seasoned practitioners as well as to newcomers, offering diverse perspectives on the current state of the field and its likely future developments.”
- Untold stories of early environmentalists come alive in oral histories. “Environmental Activism in Los Angeles features 25 in-depth oral histories with local environmentalists, half of which will be unveiled on Thursday, April 22, on Earth Day. Their accounts will be posted online both as written transcripts and digital recordings at the UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research.”
- Retro Media: Memory (and Memories) Lost. “The past 120 years saw some of the most rapid changes in how we record, collect, and use audio, visual, and now digital information. The pace creates in its wake, a long list of obsolete technologies, some of which, still exist, but for which equipment and storage technologies are not always available. This exhibit reflects this light-speed, developing technology world with a selection of media formats.”
- Five Best Offline Backup Tools. “Online backup has many benefits—safety from local catastrophe, storage on professionally maintained servers, etc.—but economy, control, and 100% guaranteed privacy aren’t among them. Check out these five popular tools for making safe and sound local backups.”
- Top 10 Funniest Google Suggest Results. “A feature from Google Labs (Google Labs), Suggest offers you real-time suggestions to complete your search query as you type. One of the factors in the algorithm that determines the results is the overall popularity of searches by other users. Part illuminating, part entertaining and part terrifying, Suggest is a window into the collective search psyche of our fellow humans. And based on the contents of this list — be afraid. Be very afraid.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: link roundup, offline backuo tools, online photo copyright, oral history, retro media, Tips, Writing
This Monday’s Link Roundup has a little something for everyone. My favorite is A Powerful Story. It’s a great example of how a story can be told creatively and powerfully in three minutes. If you can spare a few minutes, you’ll be intrigued by this video.
- A Parking Lot Poet Turns 100. “In the tiny parking lot booth just west of Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, Joe Binder writes his poems: odes to the Rat Pack and the old days in the neighborhood.
“The time was great, the people were nice
And the pizza was only five cents a slice.”
Mostly, though, Mr. Binder parks cars. And though he celebrated his 100th birthday Thursday, he has no plans to retire.”
- Let’s Bring Back. “Inspired by Ms. Blume’s popular, longstanding Huffington Post column by the same name, Chronicle Books will release Let’s Bring Back as a book on November 1, 2010. A sophisticated, stylish cultural encyclopedia, Let’s Bring Back will celebrate forgotten objects, curiosities, pastimes, landmarks, and personae from bygone eras that should not have been left behind.” [Thanks to APH member Marcy Davis for alerting me to this item.]
- The Objects and Memory Project. “In the face of sudden disruption and inexplicable loss, there is a need to bridge the irreplaceable past with a hopeful future. This film follows people driven to preserve meaningful objects in the aftermath of 9/11 and other upheavals. Otherwise ordinary items come to symbolize experiences, aspirations, and identity. Without the objects, the stories would lack vibrancy; without the stories the objects would lack significance. Taken together, the images of the objects and the stories they evoke lead the viewer on a journey where the commonplace is transformed into the remarkable and where the stuff of history is highly personalized.”
- 10 Simple Google Search Tricks. “I’m always amazed that more people don’t know the little tricks you can use to get more out of a simple Google search. Here are 10 of my favorites. ” [Thanks to APH member Marcy Davis for alerting me to this item.]
- Digital Death Day. “What happens to your bits when you die? Digital Death Day takes place on May 20, 2010 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. It’s an unconference set to explore what happens when a person dies. What happens to your digital assets? How do you probate digital assets? What about jointly held digital assets? What happens to your digital avatars? What are the policies about your email account upon death?”
- A powerful story: Simple, but not simplistic. “If I asked you to create a compelling three-minute video with only written words, could you do it? Take a look at this interesting video treatment of words playfully telling a serious story.”
- LibraryThing. “There are a lot of ways to catalog a personal book collection, but I’ve settled on LibraryThing because I have more books than other media (we don’t buy movies, aren’t gamers, etc). I use LT to keep track of my own books, books I wish I owned, or want to read (using a wish list tag) and also to keep track of books I’ve loaned out to others (tag plus a note with the date loaned).”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: Google search tricks, Life stories, link roundup, memories, oral history, Personal historian
This Monday’s Link Roundup has lots of practical tips about charting your family health history, making better speeches, finding the right color palette, and restoring old LPs with wood glue. Aren’t you glad you stopped by? 
- Family Health Histories on the Web. “It’s never been easier to trace your family’s health history. Legislation like the Health and Human Services Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ensures that you can access your private medical records, and an increasing number of Web-based sites, tools, and software capabilities can help you learn about and document your medical history.”
- Three Steps to Make Your Next Speech Your Best. “Here, I offer three quick steps leaders can take right now to improve their next speech. The steps are conceptually sophisticated but relatively easy to implement, thus fitting the busy executive lifestyle and addressing the natural objections of time and inclination.”
- Michel Gondry debuts a doc. “Last weekend a new Michel Gondry documentary screened at the fest, and it looks and sounds unlike most of the artist’s work. The Thorn in the Heart is a personal film about Gondry’s aunt, who was a teacher from 1952-1986 in a rural part of France. “Little by little, Michel discovers some family stories he was totally unaware of and uses his camera to explore it in a subtle but very emotional way.”
- Doing oral history: a practical guide by Donald A. Ritchie. A Google Book. “Doing Oral History has become one of the premier resources in oral history. It explores all aspects of the field, from starting an oral history project, including funding, staffing, and equipment to conducting interviews; publishing; videotaping; preserving materials; teaching oral history; and using oral history in museums and on the radio. In this second edition, the author has incorporated new trends and scholarship, updated and expanded the bibliography and appendices, and added a new focus on digital technology and the Internet. Appendices include sample legal release forms and information on oral history organizations.”
- BooksShouldBeFree.com. “… makes the world’s public domain audio books available for browsing in a visual and entertaining way.”
- Find the Right Color Palette for Your Next Presentation or Design. “Many of us spend hours floundering around looking for just the right colors while designing a web site, presentation, or flier. Design blog Before & After put together a great booklet detailing a little beginner’s color theory for complimenting your next effort.”
- Use Wood Glue to Clean and Restore Old LPs. “Cleaning LPs with a bottle of wood glue is hardly an intuitive way to get more mileage out of that bottle of glue in your workshop or clean a beloved LP. The results, however, are quite impressive.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: better speeches, color design, family health history, Life stories, link roundup, oral history, restoring LPs
The things you discover on Monday’s Link Roundup! Have you ever heard of “cowboy poems”? I hadn’t until I came across Tales from the ranch. Just a another creative way to capture life stories. But my favorite site has to be the newly created Popular Science Archive. With 137 years of magazine history, it’s a treasure trove of stories and images of changing life styles over the years.
- The Second Military Oral History Conference: Between Memory and History. Victoria, BC, Canada, 5-7 May 2010. “The Conference will bring together academics, students, veterans, and members of the Military to assess the value of oral history in the study of military history and contemporary military operations. More than twenty papers will be presented by scholars from the Canada, the United States and Europe. Registration: $75 General Public; $50 Veterans and Students. Registration include 2 lunches, coffee break and reception. For more information contact: dzimmerm@uvic.ca”
- Tales from the ranch. “Cowboy poems about past and modern ranch life captivated Jessica Hedges when she was a young girl…Cowboy poems are real-life stories put to rhyme and meters, similar to how songs are put together, Hedges explained. They are oral history books that are entertaining.“
- The Pioneers of American Landscape Design. “Chronicles the lives and careers of those who have designed our gardens, parks, streets, campuses, cemeteries, suburbs, and the innumerable other environments in which we live. This dynamic, ongoing series utilizes multiple formats—including biographical profiles, videotaped and transcribed oral histories, tours, and print publications—to educate, inspire, and promote the active sharing of information.”
- Tattered Cover Book Blog. Cathy, a staff member at Tattered Cover Book Store, recommends seven books for Women’s History Month.
- America’s Funniest Family Stories: A Reader’s Digest contest. “So, you think your family is funny? Your father’s stuck in a fashion time warp? Your daughter’s got her foot permanently ensconced in her mouth? Your mother-in-law is so judgmental it’s laughable? Good! We want to hear about it. Send us your funny stories about witty wives, cranky fathers, dim-witted in-laws, silly sons, spoiled pets–and more. You could win $5,000.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: cowboy poems, family stories, landscape design pioneers, Life stories, link roundup, military oral history, oral history
This Monday’s Link Roundup has some sobering news for those of us whose work is fairly sedentary. You’ll want to check out Stand Up While You Read This! And not to suggest that we can eliminate editors but there’s a very cool free site that analyzes your writing. Just for fun why not give Paper Rater a try?
- Stand Up While You Read This! “Your chair is your enemy. It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.”
- Paper Rater Analyzes and Improves Your Writing. “If you like to write but lack confidence in your skills, Paper Rater is a a free, web-based service that analyzes your writing and offers feedback on your grammar, spelling, and more. Paper Rater couldn’t be easier to use. Just paste in the text you want analyzed, choose what type of content it is—essay, research paper, speech, etc.—and submit it for review. Within seconds, Paper Rater generates a report that analyzes several aspects of your submission.”
- Caprock Quilters sew on memories. “The beginning of Operation Homefront Quilts began on a May afternoon in 2003 when Jessica Porter, a young quilter, thought of the idea of sending handmade quilts to the families of every fallen service member, regardless of the branch in which they served. With the help of her mother, Joanne Porter, and her community, the organization was lifted off its feet.”
- Oral history of jazz in Britain. “… a collection of 200 interviews assembled between 1984 and 2003, were intentionally left unedited and untranscribed. The contributors were allowed to speak for themselves and to say what they wanted.”
- TeleKast Is a Snazzy Open Source Telepromter App. “Windows/Linux: Whether you want to produce an amateur news segment, deliver a teleprompted speech, or just record a video message without a lot of “ums”, free, open-source application TeleKast is a solid desktop teleprompter worth checking out.”
- Business.gov. The offical small business and independent contractor’s link to the U.S. government. “Business.gov helps small businesses understand their legal requirements and locate government services from federal, state and local agencies.” [Thanks to Pat McNees at Writers and Editors for alerting me to this site.] For Canadians there is a government site for entrepreneurs at Canada Business.
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: government help small business, Life stories, link roundup, oral history, Paper Rater, personal history, quilting
My vote for the most unusual item in this Monday’s Link Roundup is the “wireless tombstone”. But if you’re looking for more substance, don’t miss Pat McNees’s comprehensive article on the beneficial effects of legacy work. I’ll admit to a bias, I was one of the people Pat interviewed for the piece.
- Kill Busywork: The One Skill to Focus On What Matters. “Imagine everything you do could fall into one of three buckets: 1. Bad Work. 2. Good Work. 3. Great Work. I’m not talking about the quality of the work you deliver – I’ve no doubt that’s fine. I’m talking about the meaning the work has for you and the impact it makes. Let me explain.”
- New App Integrates Storytelling with Social Media. “Well, with Facebook anyway. I’ve written about many forms of Twitter storytelling, but Snipisode is the first storytelling app I’ve come across for Facebook. Snipisode, developed Agency Zen, lets you type or paste in a whole story and then with a click of a button snip up the story either by line or by punctuation — periods, question marks, or exclamation points. Then you choose a frequency for snips of the story to appear as status updates — daily or every two days.”
- Die-Fi: Wireless Tombstones. “[An]Arizona company Objecs announced today that it has developed “enhanced memorial products” that add Near Field Communications tags to cemetery markers, which allow text and photos to be “embedded” in a headstone and retrieved whenever a cell phone is touched against its surface.”
- How to Write Your Healing Story: Interview with Linda Joy Myers. “In the latest Heart and Craft of Life Writing podcast, Linda Joy explains how writing literary memoir and integrating the story arc of our lives can lead to much deeper levels of insight than we can ever get from a pile of disconnected stories. In this wide ranging conversation she also talks about using our words, our stories, to create art.”
- Fab Forty. “Votes are in for the Family Tree Magazine 40 Best Genealogy Blogs. Come with us into a wonderful online world of family history news, research tips, encouragement and more.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: benefits, busywork, genealogy, healing, Life stories, link roundup, oral history
In honor of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, this Monday’s Link Roundup has some Canadian content. The Memory Project aims to collect the stories of WWII veterans and make them available online. John Babcock, the last of the Canadian WWI veterans, died this past week. The CBC article, John Babcock and the legacy of the ordinary soldier, is about Babcock being a link in the long history of soldiering.
- The Memory Project: Stories of the Second World War. “This nationwide bilingual project will create a record of Canada’s participation in the Second World War as seen through the eyes of thousands of veterans. The Memory Project will provide every living Second World War veteran with the opportunity to share their memories through oral interviews and digitized artefacts and memorabilia. These stories and artefacts will be available on this site for teachers, students and the general public.”
- 2010 National Genealogical Society Family History Conference. “The 2010 NGS Family History Conference will be held at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mark your calendars for 28 April–1 May 2010. Whether your family helped settle the nation, migrated across the country, stayed in the same place, or recently arrived in America, this conference has much to offer. The family history resources in Salt Lake City, Utah, will provide a depth and breadth to your research. The Family History Library has an extensive collection of international records. A major focus of the conference will be increasing research skills in foreign countries.”
- Top 100 Blogs to Improve Your Writing in 2010. “Here is a list of 100 blogs that will help you improve your writing by providing inspiration, motivation, creativity and new techniques from experts, freelancers, and editors from every genre.”
- 5 Cool Books for Creative People. “It’s time once more for 5 Cool Things. This week, it’s all about books, cool books, of course. Each one is a cool book for creative people. So, if it’s cool with you, I’ll begin.”
- John Babcock and the legacy of the ordinary soldier. “There is a long chain of links to wars of the past, a chain that can go back centuries — the legionary, the bowman, the Tommy, the grunt — and links ordinary soldiers to the beginning of history. John Babcock, who died Feb. 18, 2010, the last Canadian veteran of the First World War, was just such a link.”
- What Is Forensic Genealogy? “Forensic scientists and genealogists share the same goal–to find out who was who, and who did what and when. In explaining how to analyze photographs, to mine databases, and to use DNA analysis to reveal family history, Forensic Genealogy emphasizes the creative parts of an investigation over the mechanics.”
- Australian Judge Rules Facts Cannot Be Copyrighted. “An Australian Judge ruled that copyright laws do not apply to collections of facts, regardless of the amount of effort that was spent collecting them. In this case, the case surrounded the reproduction of entries from the White and Yellow Pages, but the ruling appears to have an impact on all sorts of things, including genealogy information.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: forensic genealogy, genealogy, John Babcock, Life stories, link roundup, oral history, Tips, Writing, WWII
