January 28, 2021 | 10:00am PST
Looking beyond the pandemic, cultural institutions large and small are assessing what lessons have been learned from our collective pivot to an online presence. This webinar focuses on the collecting of oral histories and the challenges and benefits of launching a project on a completely virtual platform. In this webinar, Zach Ellis of the oral history recording platform TheirStory is in conversation with Alisha Babbstein, archivist at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, OJMCHE.
In late August OJMCHE asked their community to help document these extraordinary times by sharing stories on how we have collectively and individually experienced the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, struggles for justice, the 2020 presidential election, and, since November, the presidential transition. Since then 30 volunteer interviewers have been trained and have conducted over 200 interviews, with the oldest participant age 92 and the youngest age 13.
Topics covered in this webinar conversation include the challenges of training interviewers remotely on interviewing skills as well as proficiency with the technology, the ethics of access to technology and the resulting outcome of whose story is told, and how these techniques will be applied to, and perhaps change, the collecting of oral histories going forward.
Alisha Babbstein will also discuss how a small museum was able to leverage this opportunity to create a robust repository of the community’s experience. Using the TheirStory oral history recording platform, trained volunteers worked with staff to record online interviews, approximately 30-40 minutes in length, which in the future will be available online.
OJMCHE is grateful to be part of this project which was launched by the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM).