Posted October 6, 2003.

American Folklife Center to House New Oral History Archive

Archivists at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center will soon begin digitizing and making available broadcast-quality personal narratives in what may become one of the largest documentary oral history projects ever donated to the library. AFC announced September 30 it will house the recorded archives of StoryCorps, a multiyear partnership between LC and Sound Portraits Productions, a nonprofit documentary production company based in New York City.

StoryCorps will build soundproof booths across the country where, for a small fee, individuals can bring relatives or friends to conduct oral history interviews aided by a trained facilitator. At the end of a 40-minute session, the participants receive a CD of the interview and can agree to have a second copy stored in the AFC archive. The first booth will open October 23 in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal.

“This project will provide America with important social documentation on a grassroots, nationwide scale that mirrors what the historic Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project accomplished more than half a century ago,” said AFC Director Peggy Bulger. “We are delighted to be partners with StoryCorps and to house a new generation of America's stories.”

The StoryCorps collection will be indexed, cataloged, and made available to the public at the AFC as well as on the LC website. Project funders include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Carnegie Corporation.

Posted October 6, 2003.