Housatonic Heritage grant for Sheffield ‘Voices from the Fields’ archives and website project, using legacy interviews

In Voices from the Fields: the Family Farms of Sheffield project, the Sheffield Land Trust launched an effort to interview farmers and their families about their histories and memories of working the land and caring for their livestock. The interviews were recorded on cassette tapes.

Last year with a small grant from Housatonic Heritage, they hired someone to digital copy some of those tapes. Now, they will complete the digital copying project and prepare materials for the state archive and for viewing on their own site.  This second phase is also supported by Housatonic Heritage.

Since 2012, there has been a 10 percent loss of active farms in Berkshire County. That fact was the impetus for Sheffield Land Trust to complete this phase of the project, and to apply for a grant to help them do it.

After the interviews are digitized and transcribed, the next step will be to make page on the current Sheffield Land Trust’s website, where the voices from the field can be heard.  Other related tasks include

•Digital copy remaining interview tapes

  • Digitize/scan photos and documents related to these interviews
  • Create a page for these interviews and photos, a simple exhibit, on the SLT site
  • Organize the transcriptions of interviews
  • Complete metadata forms for interviews
  • Create a new release/deed of gift
  • Store/archive materials on hard drive
  • Upload materials to Housatonic Heritage cloud storage
  • Prepare materials for the state archive
  • Keep an inventory spread sheet of project

At the Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College, we are so pleased to have a part to play in this project.  Also, the Berkshire Athenaeum is a partner, in that the work is being done there, in their Local History room, where the materials are stored while the digital copying is completed.

Written by Judith