Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County
News Release
(Wednesday, April 8, 2015) - The Rochester Public Library (RPL) has been selected to be a 2015 StoryCorps @ your library (SCL) pilot site. RPL was one of ten libraries selected from over 300 applicants. StoryCorps @ your library (SCL) is a project of the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office and StoryCorps with additional funding support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
Pilot libraries receive equipment, training, promotional materials, and other resources to help them develop community documentation projects using the popular and unique StoryCorps facilitated interview model. Public libraries participating in SCL will be encouraged to expand their influence and engagement in the communities they serve by collecting and preserving local voices.
RPL will be interviewing and documenting the lives of Rochester’s new Americans. Participants who volunteer for this project will be encouraged to share their stories, discussing their native countries and their lives there, their immigration experience, the challenges they face living in an American mid-sized city, plus sharing their hopes for the future.
As part of the StoryCorps approach, each interview participant receives a copy of their recording. With participant permission, and based upon a written agreement with StoryCorps, local libraries retain copies of fully released interviews. Copies of fully released interviews will also be deposited at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
This project will serve as an archive for current and future generations in the Rochester area, enabling the library to provide primary source material for researchers, school children, scouting groups, and others interested in the stories of the New American experience. Partner organizations for this initiative include the Lake Avenue Baptist Church, the young adult imagineYOU media lab at Central Library’s Teen Central and the Friends and Foundation of the Rochester Public Library.
The oral histories will be collected during the months of June through October 2015 at Central Library, 115 South Ave., Maplewood Branch Library, 1111 Dewey Ave., and other City branch locations.
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For media inquiries, please contact Sally Snow at 428-8051.