In thinking contemplating further about Sally Ellis’ article on collaboration, one of the points that really struck me was her note on the Make History Project of the 9/11 Memorial Museum. I really love the idea of collaborating on the documentation of history and began to think about historical events that could have benefited from being documented to a greater degree, and how collaborative histories could function in public libraries, archives or museums. In doing a little more research, I came upon Jake Barton’s TED talk about The Museum of You. The video is about 15 minutes, but if you have an extra 15 minutes in the day to spare, I think it’s really worthwhile.
It really illustrates how valuable collaborative efforts can be, especially in building community, aiding in reconciling tragic events, and documenting an oral history that would otherwise be lost. The documentation of daily life in history, as Barton points out, has long been recognized as valuable. Today, advancements in technologies, the rise of the Internet and open source platforms allow us to document and share our oral histories to a greater degree. I think a great project that exemplifies this is Story Corps (discussed by Barton), which invites ordinary people to enter a booth, fitted with microphones, to have a conversation. These conversations are then preserved in the Library of Congress. It’s a pretty amazing project, and listening to the conversations (or stories) on the site can be pretty emotionally overwhelming! But it’s incredible to be able to capture people just as they are in present day. One conversation in particular really tugged at my heartstrings (played in the Barton talk as well), I’ll link it here.
Projects such as Story Corps and the 9/11 Make History Project really got me thinking about how emotional connections can aid in public interaction, and how oral history can also be an interactive process (that is that it involves both listening but also talking/responding). It’s interesting to see how this could work within communities and public libraries. Story Corps was stationed in New York, but had it been in a smaller rural town or library, I really think that oral histories could weave each community closer and have each person feel part of the collaborative process.
On a final, brief and semi-related note, I’ll just direct your attention to another project I think is really neat. It’s called Humans of New York by photographer Brandon Stanton. The website (which also has manifestations on Instagram/Facebook/Tumblr) contains a catalogue of portraits of individuals living in New York along with a short story about each individual. It’s a pretty ambitious project, but in thinking about this catalogue of people, I keep thinking how would this play out in a smaller town or library? I’ll contemplate that for a little while longer.
References
Barton, J. (2013). The Museum of You. TED Talk. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/jake_barton_the_museum_of_you#t-920162
Ellis,S. (2014, March). A History of Collaboration, a Future in Crowdsourcing: Positive Impacts of Cooperation on British Librarianship. Libri 64: 1-10. Retrieved from http://www.crowdconsortium.org/wp-content/uploads/A-History-of-Collaboration-a-Future-in-Crowdsourcing-Positive-Impacts-of-Cooperation-on-British-Librarianship.pdf
Stanton, B. (2015). Humans of New York. Retrieved from http://www.humansofnewyork.com
Story Corps. (2015). [website] Retrieved from http://storycorps.org