Oral History Initiative
Thanks to funding from the Calvert Library Foundation and extensive volunteer support, Calvert Library is proud to begin an initiative to collect accessible oral histories from our community.
Accessible?
Many oral histories have been collected by a wide variety of organizations and individuals in Calvert County. Calvert Library’s goal is to begin the process of making oral histories digital, transcribed, searchable and cataloged so that our students and researchers will be able to use the content.
For those with appropriate permissions, those digital files will be housed at Digital Maryland, a collaborative, statewide digitization program headquartered at the Enoch Pratt Free Library/State Library Resource Center in Baltimore. Their collection is also searched by those using the Digital Public Library of America so our histories will be widely available.
And of course, we will also link to them from our own library catalog.
Oral Histories?
We will also collect oral histories of those that haven’t been collected using the StoryCorps facilitated interview model. “The StoryCorps interview model fosters communication by promoting the importance of listening, and we’ve found that listening to others’ stories can be just as powerful as sharing one’s own story. The model establishes a sacred space for two people who know each other to speak for 40 uninterrupted minutes about what matters to them most.” -from the StoryCorps Toolkit for Success.
At this time, we are looking for conversations about how people have transformed Calvert County.
Help?
To do this, we need lots of volunteers to help facilitate interviews, transcribe, review and tag/catalog the oral histories. You can register for upcoming training.
The volunteer positions we are looking to fill are:
Oral History Interview Coordinator: Facilitate the collection of Calvert County history through oral history interviews.
Oral History Transcriptionist: Facilitate high quality and accessible Calvert County oral history interviews.
Oral History Reviewer: Facilitate high quality and accessible Calvert County oral history interviews.