Capturing Our Stories, one of Loriene Roy's 2007/2008 ALA Presidential Initiatives, is a national oral history program to gather life histories of experienced librarians as they exit their careers. The histories will be easily accessible to colleagues, students and less experienced librarians though a digital library.
Visit our website to see an example of an interview in the "Life Stories" section. You may view the interview using streaming video, download the transcript of the interview, or view the interview with the transcript using an exciting technology called Glifos. Glifos allows researchers to conduct keyword searches and very quickly identify sections of the interview that are of interest.
The website address for the Project is:
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~stories/index.html
Mission Statement
Capturing Our Stories is a national oral history program that will gather life histories of experienced librarians as they exit their careers. It will make those histories easily accessible to colleagues, students and less experienced librarians.
Goal: To record the life histories of selected retired/retiring librarians and disseminate and interpret these stories as lessons for the current and future librarian workforce.
Objectives:
- To develop and coordinate a plan for a national oral history program;
- To develop a content-rich website providing information about project plans, progress, products, and an open discussion forum/blog;
- To conduct at least six life history interviews of retired/retiring librarians by 30 June 2008;
- To prepare outlines of life history interviews of retired/retiring librarians;
- To prepare for the deposit of the life histories in the ALA Archives;
- To inform the librarian community about Capturing Our Stories and its progress;
- To create a plan for a Capturing Our Stories Digital Library to provide enhanced access to the content of the life history interviews;
- To prepare a plan for formative and summative evaluation criteria and for sustainability of Capturing Our Stories.