Do you have a shelf of recorded oral histories in your Historical Society? Would you like to know how to create an oral history project for your family? For your town? For your school? Do you want to know how to preserve the tapes that contain that oral history? Then “Oral Histories: Conducting Them and Preserving Them” is for you!
It is not easy to conduct oral history interviews that will provide useful information in the future. Good preparation and knowledge about interviewing techniques are necessary to assure high quality results.
Third in a series of Symposia, “Oral Histories: Conducting Them and Preserving Them” will take place on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at the Cosmopolitan Club, 122 E 66th Street.
Mary Marshall Clark, an expert in this field and the Director of The Columbia University Oral History Research Office, will give a talk about conducting oral history interviews and establishing an oral history project. The Columbia University office is the oldest and largest organized oral history program in the world. Founded in 1948 by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Allan Nevins, the oral history collection now contains nearly 8,000 taped memoirs, and nearly 1,000,000 pages of transcript.
Over the past decade, Clark has interviewed notable individuals such as Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and the late Congresswoman Bella Abzug among many others. Currently, she is working on the Malcolm X – Dr. Betty Shabazz Oral History Project, which will record interviews with their surviving siblings and close relatives, prominent civil rights, labor, business and community leaders from Harlem and throughout black America.
Prior to her work at Columbia, Clark was involved with the "New York Times History Project," an effort to compile oral histories of Times employees, and has served as a consultant for internationally award-winning documentary films. She has developed other oral history projects in New York, including programs for public and private schools and museums. She is president of the United States Oral History Association and has served on the Executive Council of the International Oral History Association. She teaches a graduate oral history course at Columbia and directs the Columbia University Summer Institute on Oral History. Clark has lectured and delivered seminars at Columbia University's Teachers College, Barnard College, Sarah Lawrence College, the City University of New York and many other institutions. In addition, she has lectured in Brazil and the Netherlands on topics related to oral history and memory.
Each year, more than 2,000 scholars consult Columbia's Oral History Research Office, which boasts interviews with such notables as former President Jimmy Carter, former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Dorothy Parker, and Fred Astaire. Founded in 1948, the collection is second only to the Library of Congress in scope, with 15,000 hours of tape and 8,000 interviews.
Peter Brothers is a recognized authority on the preservation of (audio and video) magnetic tape. He has worked on tape damaged by Hurricane Katrina, as well as tape from government agencies, major broadcast networks, libraries, museums and archives. He will talk about how to preserve your tape collections, as well as how to deal with tape collections damaged by a disaster.
Peter Brothers is CEO of Specs Bros, a magnetic tape restoration, disaster recovery and re-mastering facility that has processed over 350,000 tapes since 1983. He is also an active member and contributing author to the SMPTE, AES, ANSI, and ISO technical commissions that write National and International Standards concerning the preservation of magnetic tape.
Mr. Brothers will discuss a number of basic issues concerning the handling and preservation of magnetic tape. Among the issues he will cover are proper storage conditions and a few basic handling techniques to help protect your tapes. He will also review a simple visual examination you can use to evaluate the general condition of your tapes and determine if the tapes you have are still safe to use as is, or may need some attention. This examination, which is now a part of published international standards, is simple, fast, and requires no equipment to perform.
Registration for this event is $40 for MHSA or LHC members, $25 Students, and $50 for the general public.
For further information, please contact Matthew Nash, MHSA Interim Executive Director at 917.679.5884 or matthewnash@nyc.rr.com.
While better known as a scholarly Museum of mid-19th century domestic culture, the Merchant’s House has also been called “Manhattan’s Most Haunted House.” This October, the Museum’s spirited reputation will again attract scores of visitors to its annual series of entertaining (and educational) programs about death and mourning in the 19th century.
The House will be draped in black crepe, as if for a 19th-century funeral, and visitors will experience the eeriness of authentically recreated deathbed and funeral scenes, complete with corpse and coffin. Special events include five nights of Candlelight Tours (called “resonant theater” by The New York Times) and a mid-19th century funeral. See calendar below.
Last October, nationwide web and print coverage drew crowds to the Museum and thousands to its website. Many may have come just to see the ghosts, but we’re proud to say they left with a deeper appreciation of life – and death – in 19th-century New York City.
Future generations will be able to glimpse into the lives of early New Yorkers thanks to a grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant will enable the Staten Island Historical Society to preserve the extensive collection of vintage negatives and prints by E. Alice Austen (1866-1952), that document life in New York during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Purchased by the Society in 1950, the Austen collection was designated a “We the People” project by the National Endowment for Humanities in 2005. The Collection, the largest of Ms. Austen’s work, includes more than 7,000 items that reflect Ms. Austen’s class, gender and era. Her images include scenes of the affluent social circle in which she lived, and documents the prominent social concerns of the day of immigration, urbanization and family life.
“This grant provides funding to help preserve and care for this valuable collection and follows an earlier grant from the National Endowment for Humanities,” said John W. Guild, Executive Director of the Staten Island Historical Society. “The grant will allow the Society to improve storage and continue to catalog the collection, assuring that current and future generations will have access to these photos. The IMLS grant is a part of the National Conservation Project Support program.” The Society is one of only five New York State grantees.
Anne-Imelda M. Radice, Ph.D., Director, Institute of Museum and Library Services noted, “The Conservation Project Support awards help museums develop comprehensive strategies for the care of their collections, safeguarding pieces of our nation’s story, now and for future generations.”
Conservation Project Support awards to help museums identify conservation needs and priorities and perform activities to ensure the safekeeping of their collections. The grants are awarded through competitive peer review and require, at least, a 100 percent match by the applicant. These grants help museums develop a logical, institution-wide approach to caring for their collections. The program is an essential component of the Institute’s goal of sustaining cultural heritage as a means of creating and sustaining a nation of learners. Applicants apply for the project that meets the institution’s highest conservation needs.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 15,000 museums. Its mission is to grow and sustain a “Nation of Learners” because life-long learning is essential to a democratic society and individual success. Through its grant making, convenings, research and publications, the Institute empowers museums and libraries nationwide to provide leadership and services to enhance learning in families and communities, sustain cultural heritage, build twenty-first-century skills, and increase civic participation. To learn more about the Institute, please visit: http://www.imls.gov.
Nassau County Museum of Art unveils a never-before-seen small exhibition of paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. The famed painting, Netherlandish Proverbs, is included in this first viewing on the East Coast. Among the other works are Seven Acts of Mercy, The Wedding Dance, Peasants Merrymaking and The Bird Trap. The exhibition is sponsored by the Belgian Tourist Office — Flanders Region and David Lerner Associates; it is supported in part by Astoria Federal Savings.
In conjunction with this exhibition, on Saturday, September 29, NCMA is presenting Sixteenth- and Seventeenth Century Flemish Culture, the first in a series of Humanities Symposia devoted to themes that arise in coming exhibitions at the museum. The September 29 keynote speaker is Wolfgang Mieder, Ph.D., Professor of German and Folklore at the University of Vermont. Watch our website, nassaumuseum.com, for further details. For information about the Belgium Tourist Office’s sponsorship of this exhibition, log onto visitbelgium.com.
Federal funding, through the “Save America’s Treasures” preservation program has been secured to implement the first major restoration of the historic landmark Edgar Allan Poe Cottage sine the city of New York purchased it in 1913 and opened it as a museum. The grant, secured through the efforts of Congressman José E. Serrano, has been matched with funding from the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission and city capital money put into the budget by NYC Councilman Joel Rivera, and the Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion’s Office. The restoration project calls for extensive interior and exterior conservation and preservation work, including window conservation, plaster restoration, removal of multiple layers of exterior paint, and wood repair, as needed. The anticipated start period for construction is Fall/Winter 2007. The Historic House Trust and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation will supervise the project, in coordination with the Bronx County Historical Society and the National Park Service, the project’s federal agency partner.
Poe Cottage, built c. 1812, as a City and State historic landmark, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Here in Poe’s last home (1846-1849), he wrote such memorable works as “The Bells,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Visited by people from around the world, a guided tour through its period rooms is supplemented by a show on Poe’s life as understood in the context of 1840s New York. In addition to the Poe Cottage restoration work, 2007 should see the start of construction for the Poe Park Visitors’ Center, expected to include public bathrooms and programmatic space. The historic house museum is operated by the Bronx County Historical Society and is a member of the Historic House Trust of New York City.
