Center for Digital Storytelling, Berkeley, CA, USA

The Center for Digital Storytelling, based in Berkeley, CA, USA, offers workshops around the world. An upcoming three-day workshop will be held at Royal Roads University, Vancouver Island, from March 26 to March 28, 02010.

Archive of American Television (EmmyTVLegends.org)

Back in August 02009 my local newspaper reported on a story from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences about a new Web site it was launching on September 1, 02009 at the URL TVlegends.org that "will have more than 2,000 hours of interviews, some of them more than three hours long, with luminaries like Burnaby-raised Michael J. Fox and Montreal native William Shatner." Today I went looking for this site only to discover it doesn't exist and the URL is likely EmmyTVLegends.org, otherwise known as the Archive of American Televison. The Web site indeed states that "The Archive has collected hundreds of in-depth video interviews with TV's greatest legends and pioneers -- now available worldwide. The interviews can be watched all the way through, or browsed by person, show, topic or profession. Enjoy the site and be sure to visit often -- new interviews and indexes are added regularly." For anyone in cultural studies this site has to be a dream come true. Congratulations to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation for making this terrific resource freely available.

Sounding off archivally at the British Library

The British Library has launched an online archives of 28,000 sound recordings (2,000 hours) that date back to 1898 when wax cylinders were all the rage. According to the library's announcement of 2009 09 04:

The Archival Sound Recordings project makes a variety of music, spoken word, and environmental sounds from the British Library Sound Archive available online and is part of the British Library's ongoing commitment to improving access and ensuring the preservation of invaluable primary source materials for research, teaching and learning. All recordings on Archival Sound Recordings can be accessed from British Library reading rooms and are available for free to licensed UK higher and further education institutions. In addition, where permission has been granted, these recordings can be listened to by the public online at: http://sounds.bl.uk.

The digitisation of the sounds was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) which supports education and research in the use of information and communications technology: www.jisc.ac.uk.The British Library’s Archival Sound Recording project is part of the JISC Digitisation Programme, which has received over £22 million in funding from the Higher Education Funding Councils for England and Wales to make available a wide range of heritage and scholarly resources of national importance. This includes sound recordings, moving pictures, newspapers, maps, images, cartoons, census data, journals and parliamentary papers for use by the UK further and higher education communities.

Source: DIG_REF@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU (02009 09 07)

Center of Oral History & Digital Storytelling, Concordia University, Canada

Since I started my archival career in part as an oral historian, I'm delighted to see a revitalization of this important tool through examples at and a software application under development by the Center of Oral History & Digital Storytelling at Concordia University, Canada. The Oral History Research Lab is finishing work on software for building oral history collections that it calls Stories Matter. Although described as open source software, the application uses Adobe AIR, but can run on Windows, Mac or Linux platforms. According to the Stories Matter blog post (2009 07 05),

"In its current state, Stories Matter is free, open source software that is compatible with MacIntosh and PC operating systems. It allows for the archiving of digital video and audio materials, enabling users to annotate, analyze, evaluate and export materials, as well as tag, index, search, and browse within interviews, sessions, and clips or across entire collections. ... the development of Phase II of Stories Matter, which will begin on July 15th. Its purpose is to enable increased collaboration among oral historians by providing an intuitive online database tool that can assist group projects and encourage public engagement. Phase II of Stories Matter is scheduled to be completed in December of 2009, with a public launch to follow shortly thereafter."

Among its projects are the Working Class Public History Website and the Sturgeon Falls Mill Closing Project.