Note to our Connecticut partners about Their Story recording platform

By / October 17, 2024

For Connecticut history organizations conducting oral history projects, the University of Connecticut, CT Humanities, and CT Museum funded the purchase of a number of  licenses for the recording platform, Their Story. If you are one of the Oral History Center’s partners in NW Connecticut, send an email message to me and I refer you to… Read more

Beginning a project with Manos Unidas

By / October 8, 2024

As we begin to work with Manos Unidas, we look at other projects that can help us create a project that makes sense to them.   They have a grant from Mass Humanities to do the project, and we at the Oral History Center will be the “Humanities Advisor” on the project. One project, by Reinout… Read more

Housatonic Heritage Walk with OLLI , History of Indian Town, Stockbridge, this weekend

By / September 19, 2024

Housatonic Heritage Walk with OLLI, History of Indian Town, Stockbridge, MA, this  Saturday, Sept. 21 10 AM – 12 NOON   and   1 PM – 3 PM THE HISTORY OF INDIAN TOWN, STOCKBRIDGE Indian Town was chartered in 1737 as a mission to the Mohican tribe to teach them English, about Christianity and about English agricultural… Read more

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

By / September 16, 2024

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… Read more

Oral History of Work: Talking Shop with CTSB

By / August 21, 2024

The Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College and Community Television for the Southern Berkshires (CTSB) have started a collaborative project that will highlight stories about people and the work they do. We will begin with 10 interviews.  With those 10 people, we will talk with people who work more or less behind… Read more

Working the Forest

By / July 2, 2024

Mary O’Neill is interviewing 5 people who have dedicated their work lives to studying, caring for, stewarding, and educating us about 6,000 acres in NW Connecticut, an area known as the Great Mountain Forest. https://greatmountainforest.org/ This project is part of the Center’s Oral History of Work initiative, in which we hope to shine light on… Read more

Story Corps 2016 visit interviews

By / June 24, 2024

  Years ago, StoryCorps visited Great Barrington, Mass, and we collaborated with them to set up a day long interview schedule at Berkshire Community College South County Center.  Neighbors came with neighbors, colleagues with co-workers and mentors, elders with their children. The interviews were not available to us, but eventually, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, the… Read more

May 9 Oral History Symposium leaders announced

By / April 15, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 14, 2024 Contact:  Judith Monachina Director, Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College 413-236-1025 judithmonachina@berkshirecc.edu www.theoralhistorycenter.org Oral History Center symposium leaders announced Experts on project design, interviewing, digital storytelling, bilingual projects, oral history theater, and other subjects will share their expertise STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.—The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge will… Read more

A day of Oral History, a Symposium at the Red Lion Inn, in Stockbridge Mass, May 9

By / April 5, 2024

Join us for an Oral History Symposium Thursday, May 9, 2024 ‘ At the Red Lion Inn, Stockbridge, Mass. Speakers and workshop leaders will walk us through •Oral History Project Design and Planning •Interviewing skills for oral history •Archiving your work with Digital Commonwealth •Making a beautiful – or compelling, or impactful, etc. – oral… Read more

Spring symposium at the Red Lion Inn, Stockbridge

By / February 1, 2024

We are resuming a tradition The annual spring Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College Oral History Symposium May 9, 2024, 9-4 Red Lion Inn, Stockbridge, Massachusetts  We will invite guests and friends to give workshops, share insights, and talk about what they know, with subjects ranging from Project Design, to Technology, to… Read more

Last week, we lost a 102-year-old Stockbridge resident, David Resnik.  In 2016, a BCC student interviewed him

By / December 22, 2023

Last week, we lost a 102-year-old Stockbridge resident, David Resnik.  In 2016, a BCC student interviewed him. In 2016, Berkshire Community College student Dave Wasielewski was studying history with Chris Laney and wanted to interview a veteran.  World War II veteran David Resnik agreed to be interviewed. Paul O’Brien, a retired teacher in Sheffield who… Read more

Photography in Collections, A Conversation on the Commons

By / December 4, 2023

Oral history collections often include more than recordings of oral history interviews. When you open boxes and look into hard drives, you might find various documents, including photographs.  Or, you might plan an oral history project that includes photographs. In an upcoming Conversation on the Commons, panelists Martha Mahard (Simmons University) and Ron Polito (UMass… Read more

Roadhouse era Interest Group is featured in online open house at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

By / November 9, 2023

The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Berkshire Community College is hosting a  Shared Interest Group (SIG) open house. One of those SIGs is led by someone who began his project with the Oral History Center, Mark Rosenman: History of Music in The Berkshires – The Road House EraUncover the rich history of music in the Berkshires,… Read more

Holding Community Events to Celebrate the Oral History Project

By / October 23, 2023

Last week, we participated in a community event for the completion of an oral history project of the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center, a program of New England Historic Geneological Society (now American Ancestors), which is based in Boston.  Hundreds (though I did not count) of people showed up to celebrate. Rachel King and Sarah… Read more

Berkshire Athenaeum partners with the Oral History Center and Sheffield’s Voices from the Fields

By / October 6, 2023

Sheffield Land Trust oral history interviews with farmers are now getting digital copies as we prepare them for the Digital Commonwealth, where they will safely archived and available to the public.   Katherine Abbott is doing the work for us.  We are working in collaboration with the Sheffield Historical Society and the Local History Department… Read more

Tyringham Oral Histories now available through Digital Commonwealth

By / September 29, 2023

We are so pleased to announce that the oral history collection from Tyringham is now online and available for you to listen. There are many people to thank for this, but let’s start with Ann Gallo, who saw a box of tapes and wondered what they were.  She set out to digital copy each one… Read more

CTSB, Community Television for Southern Berkshires, airs Tom Wojtkowski interview

By / September 5, 2023

Thank you to Erica Spizz and Steven Borns at Community Television for the Southern Berkshires (CTSB). They are helping us tell our stories, including this one. Tom Wojtkowski was co-sponsor of the bill in the Massachusetts legislature that created the state’s community college system.  Berkshire Community College was the first. CTSB aired the interview we… Read more

2023 Heritage Walks

By / August 22, 2023

Housatonic Heritage offers Heritage Walks every year.  And each year, the list of participating sites grows. The walks (cycles, paddles, etc.) are free, guided interpretive tours to off-the-beaten-path  (or hidden in plain site)  historic, cultural, industrial, and natural sites in Berkshire County, MA, & Litchfield County, CT. All happening over five weekends in September and… Read more

Fieldnotes from Vermont Folklife Center – in the Wake of a Natural Disaster

By / July 21, 2023

Vermont Folklife Center gives us a model to emulate. At this time, as they continue their work on various projects, they respond to the flooding, the natural disaster, in the state. Here is a link to the resources they are sharing for recording, interviewing, and documentation in the wake of a natural disaster. (Of course,… Read more

Memory maps

By / July 13, 2023

We are exploring memory maps, and we ran across one that we like a lot. Click here: https://jewishmanchestermemorymap.org/   This visual is a cropped version, but just go to the site, linked above, to click on place names and listen to stories. We are exploring ways to make our own memory maps.     This… Read more

Digital archives assistant, part-time, paid internship

By / April 25, 2023

  Paid Position/Internship in the Oral History Center, in person and hybrid All training is provided. Digital archive assistant One of the most important parts of the work of the Oral History Center is safe keeping of the interviews we and our partners conduct. We have conducted and audio/video recorded interviews with alumni, former faculty,… Read more

42nd Annual Connecticut Storytelling Festival and Conference

By / April 7, 2023

The Connecticut Storytelling Center strives to provide the means for people of all ages to experience stories as a means of expression and communication, as a tool for thinking, reflecting, teaching and learning, and as a catalyst for change. This spring, the League is proud to promote: 42nd Annual Connecticut Storytelling Festival & Conference Friday, April… Read more

Internship available with the Oral History Center

By / March 24, 2023

  The Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College is offering a paid internship in the Summer, 2023, which may continue into Fall semester of 2023. We are a community oral history center, which means we help community organizations in the region to create, organize, and safely archive the stories of people who… Read more

Sharon Historical Oral Histories now online

By / March 10, 2023

If you are daunted by those boxes of cassette tapes in your collection, read about the project  of the Sharon (Connecticut) Historical Society.  They have followed a roadmap that brought them from a situation in which they were not sure what was in those boxes of tapes to making those very interviews available online at… Read more

Story Circle Logistics

By / March 7, 2023

At the end of our first story circle about story circles, in February,  participants wanted to talk about logistics.  We agreed that our next session would be devoted to this:  The logistics of story circles.  Friday, March 10, 12-1, via zoom. We will talk about workflow, including setting up the room, in person or virtual,… Read more

Story Circle about Story Circles

By / January 20, 2023

Happy New Year We are experimenting with an idea:  hosting a story circle for oral history practitioners who want to: •talk about story circles, or •learn about them, or •share their own experiences with story circles. Join us for an informal lunchtime gathering to chat about story circles in a story circle format, on zoom…. Read more

Berkshire Historical completes a legacy oral history project: Invisible Communities

By / November 11, 2022

Congratulations to Berkshire Historical Society Originally a Mass Humanities-funded project, with Barbara Allen, then Berkshire Historical Society Director as lead, and Frances Jones Sneed, Mass Humanities Scholar, this collection of  20 interviews of African American elders was initiated in the late 1990’s. A few years ago, we were able to act as stewards as the… Read more

Archives 101 begins tomorrow, zoom

By / October 3, 2022

Archives 101 When: Tuesday, October 04, 2022 10:00 AM, EDT Where: Zoom Will you be attending?   Register Not attending     EVENT DETAILS: A free, five-part webinar series running Tuesdays from 10 to 11 a.m., October 4 through November 4 This series of five, one-hour webinars provides information and instruction in the basics of… Read more

Archivist-Intern imports paper heritage recordings and gets them ready for the archive

By / September 27, 2022

We are working on our paper making collection, which documents paper making in the region, and in Lee, Mass, primarily.   Making sure the digital files were safe was task number one.   We are fortunate to be working with an archivist, Schuyler Fohrhaltz-Burbank, a recent graduate of the Simmons University MS Library and Information Science/ Archives… Read more

Incarceration, Oral History, Documentary & “Suave”, offered by Columbia University OHMA

By / September 20, 2022

Incarceration, Oral History, Documentary & ‘Suave’  SIGN UP NOW  Where: Zoom – Sign up to receive the link here When: Thursday, September 22, 2022, 6:00pm-7:30pm EST Maria Hinojosa spent nearly 20 years documenting with David Luis “Suave” Gonzalez, who was incarcerated for a crime he was convicted of at the age of 17. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning… Read more

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