[Vision2020] National Oral History Project

[Debbie Gray]

Scheduled to be in Moscow, Aug 25-Sept 5. I initially read about 
it in the Spokesman, think it is hosted by the Latah County 
Historical Society...

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2005/05-091.html
April 15, 2005 
Press contact: Helen Dalrymple (202) 707-1940; 
Joanne Rasi (202) 288-6999
Public contact: American Folklife Center (202) 707-5510
American Folklife Center Web Site: www.loc.gov/folklife/
Booth Schedule at Library May 19-28: 
www.loc.gov/folklife/storycorps-tour.html
StoryCorps Web Site: www.storycorps.net
National Oral History Project, Storycorps, to Kick Off 
Nationwide Tour from Library of Congress on May 19
Collected Stories to Become Part of Collections of American 
Folklife Center

The Library of Congress will host the national launch of the 
oral history project StoryCorps, created by award-winning 
National Public Radio documentary producer Dave Isay, with a 
news conference on May 19.  

Two mobile recording booths in trailers will be stationed in 
front of the Library's James Madison Memorial Building at 101 
Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C., from May 19 to May 28, 
as the first stop in their one-year tour to collect stories of 
ordinary Americans from across the United States. Interviews 
with Anthony Williams, mayor of the District of Columbia; Chuck 
Brown, the father of go-go music; Ben's Chili Bowl owners; and 
Sue Mingus, widow of composer and jazz bass player Charles 
Mingus are scheduled for Thursday, May 19, following the news 
conference.  

The oral histories that StoryCorps collects will be given in 
digital form to the American Folklife Center at the Library of 
Congress, which has a statutory mandate to "preserve and present 
American folklife." StoryCorps is the first "born-digital" audio 
collection for the center, the largest oral narrative collection 
in the nation.  

For up-to-date information on scheduled interviews, go to the 
center's Web site at www.loc.gov/folklife/.  

"StoryCorps will provide America with important social 
documentation on a grassroots, nationwide scale that mirrors 
what the historic Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal 
Writers' Project accomplished more than half a century ago," 
said Peggy Bulger, director of the American Folklife Center. 
"Just as we have preserved and made accessible the WPA 
recordings, we are delighted to be partners with StoryCorps and 
to house a new generation of America's stories."  

StoryCorps is a national initiative to instruct and inspire 
individuals to record oral histories and create meaningful 
personal experiences for the participants. With 2,000 stories 
already collected during the project's first 18 months through 
its recording booth at Grand Central Terminal in New York, 
StoryCorps hopes to collect more than 250,000 interviews over 
the next 10 years. Traveling to every corner of the United 
States, the project will be documenting everyday history and the 
unique stories of grassroots America.  

"Over the past year and a half, we've seen the profound effect 
StoryCorps has had on the lives of those who have participated 
in the project, and we've seen the power that these stories have 
had on the millions who have heard them," said Isay. "We believe 
that listening is an act of love. StoryCorps will engage 
communities, teach participants to become better listeners, 
foster intergenerational communication and help Americans 
appreciate the strength in the stories of everyday people they 
find all around them."  

>From Washington, the MobileBooths will set out in opposite 
directions across the country—one taking an Eastern route and 
the other covering the Western states. Visits in each city or 
town will last between two and three weeks, with about 100 
interview slots available at each location. This inaugural tour 
will last one year and stop at nearly 45 cities. A list of the 
25 cities in 16 states that the StoryCorps MobileBooths will 
visit during the first six months of the tour is appended to 
this release.

In each city where the MobileBooths stop, StoryCorps will 
partner with a local public radio station, which will air a 
selection of the local stories and create additional programming 
around the project. Selected segments will also air nationally 
on NPR's "Morning Edition."

At each MobileBooth, a trained facilitator will help create a 
question list and handle the technical aspects of the recording. 
At the end of a 40-minute session, the participants leave with a 
CD of their interview. With their permission, a second copy will 
be sent to the American Folklife Center.

The MobileBooths have been funded by National Public Radio (NPR) 
and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

"We are delighted to be able to sponsor this amazing project," 
said Jay Kernis, NPR's senior vice president for programming. 
"StoryCorps makes the statement that the experiences of
everyday people are as important as those of elected officials, 
experts and those who have achieved a degree of celebrity. 
Listeners have been moved by the honesty and depth of emotion of 
the extraordinary stories from the StoryCorps over the past 18 
months, and we expect that this response will be even greater as 
they hear stories from around the country."

"CPB and StoryCorps share the mission to inform, enlighten and 
enrich the public," said CPB President and CEO Kathleen Cox. 
"CPB is proud to support this creative and engaging project, 
which will capture stories that families will cherish for 
generations."

StoryCorps opened its first StoryBooth, a freestanding 
soundproof recording studio, in New York City's Grand Central 
Terminal in October 2003. A second StoryBooth will open this 
March on the site of the World Trade Center. Over the course of 
the 10-year project, StoryCorps plans to open StoryBooths—both 
mobile and stationary—across the country. StoryCorps is a 
project of Sound Portraits Productions, a nonprofit public radio 
documentary production company founded by Isay.

The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 and 
placed at the Library of Congress to preserve and document 
American folklife through programs of research, documentation, 
archival preservation, reference service, live performance, 
exhibition, public programs and training The center incorporates 
the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established in the 
Library in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of 
ethnographic material from the United States and around the 
world. The Archive of Folk Culture will be the repository for 
the StoryCorps collection. More information can be found at 
www.loc.gov/folklife/.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a private, nonprofit 
corporation created by Congress in 1967 to develop educational 
public radio, television and online services for the American 
people. CPB is the industry's largest single source of funds for 
national public television and radio program development and 
production. As a grant-making organization, CPB funds more than 
1,000 public radio and television stations. For more 
information, go to its Web site at www.cpb.org.

National Public Radio is renowned for journalistic excellence 
and standard-setting news and entertainment programming. A 
privately supported, nonprofit, membership organization,
NPR serves a growing audience of more than 22 million Americans 
each week through more than 770 public radio stations. 
International partners in cable, satellite and short-wave 
services make NPR programming accessible anywhere in the world. 
With original online content and audio streaming, www.npr.org 
offers hourly newscasts, special features and seven years of 
archived audio and information.

Sound Portraits Productions, a nonprofit company based in New 
York City, is one of the country's most acclaimed documentary 
production houses. Under the direction of MacArthur Fellow Dave 
Isay, its mission is to tell the stories of ordinary Americans. 
Sound Portraits has accomplished this goal primarily through the 
creation of dozens of award-winning radio programs broadcast on 
NPR's "All Things Considered." Whether on the radio, in print, 
or on the Web, Sound Portraits is committed to producing 
innovative works of lasting educational, cultural and artistic 
value. To hear some of their previous radio programs, visit 
www.soundportraits.org.

StoryCorps American Tour
May - November 2005

East

May 30 - June 13
Charlottesville, Va.

June 16 - July 2
Morgantown and Charleston, W.Va.

July 5 - July 25
Columbus, Ohio

July 28 - Aug. 15
Detroit and Ann Arbor, Mich.

Aug. 18 - Sept. 5
Chicago, Ill.

Sept. 8 - Sept. 26
St. Louis, Mo.

Sept. 29 - Oct. 10
Paducah, Ky.

Oct. 13 - Oct. 31
Memphis, Tenn.

Nov. 3 - Nov. 21
Selma, Ala.
	

West

June 2 - June 6
Milwaukee, Wis.

June 9 - June 20
Madison, Wis.

June 23 - July 10
Minneapolis, Minn.

July 14 - July 31
Bismarck and New Town, N.D.

Aug. 4 - Aug. 22
Missoula, Mont.

Aug. 25 - Sept. 5
Moscow, Idaho

Sept. 7 - Sept. 26
Seattle, Wash.

Sept. 29 - Oct. 17
Portland, Ore.

Oct. 20 - Nov. 7
Medford, Ore.

Nov. 10 - Nov. 28
San Francisco Bay area, Calif.

# # #

PR 05-091 (rev.)
04/15/05
ISSN 0731-3527