Image via Flickr
At the Brooklyn Historical Society, you can LISTEN to recordings of oral history interviews as well as read the transcripts.
Why is that important news?
Listen to this clip of an interview with Carmela Zuza, a welder in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during WWII as she talks about watching the launching of the U.S.S. Missouri:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
There is so much information and emotion in Carmela Zuza’s voice that can’t be translated into text!
The Brooklyn Historical Society’s archives contain interviews with people born as early as 1890 and as recently as 2006. The oral history collections include recordings of over 500 narrators and are constantly growing.
Here’s how you can LISTEN to oral histories at BHS:
You can search our oral history collections here on EMMA, a catablog of archives, manuscripts, & special collections.
If you find a collection you are interested in, you can come in to the Othmer Library (visitor info here) and ask to use the Listening Station. You can browse or search collections at the Listening Station using Past Perfect, which looks like this:
Screenshot of Past Perfect Interview Record
I know this screenshot is hard to read — the important thing to know is that by clicking the green button labeled “View available Multimedia links” (to the left of the thumbnail portrait) you can see the transcript and listen to the audio file right there!
If you’re not in New York City and don’t plan on visiting BHS soon, you can still hear voices from the oral history collections:
Firstly, if you click on the tag “Oral History Highlights“ right down there in the right-hand sidebar of this very blog (keep scrolling till you see the TAG CLOUD) you’ll see that we post a lot of audio clips from the collections here. We also share these audio clips from exhibitions, educational programs, and events through the BHS PODCAST which is available for free via iTunes. You can Download iTunes for Free to Mac or PC. If you already have iTunes, search the podcast store for “Brooklyn” and you’ll find the Brooklyn Historical Society’s podcast there among good company (1st column, 6th row down)!
Screenshot of iTunes Store Search: "Brooklyn"
And now, you can also find audio clips from the BHS oral history collections on the new location-based listening app Broadcastr. Look for Brooklyn History in the FEATURED tab: Broadcastr lets people create and share recordings on an interactive map. Broadcastr also has a mobile phone app with a Geoplay feature that streams stories based on your physical location using your smartphone’s GPS. For example, you can take a walk through Fort Greene while the BHS neighborhood walking tour streams automatically into your headphones! BHS willl be adding new audio content all the time – and you can upload your own neighborhood history and tag it with #BHS to share it with BHS.
Broadcastr app on iPhone
If you have questions about the BHS oral history collections or would like to suggest we interview someone, contact us:
oralhistory[at]brooklynhistory[dot]org
