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Storytelling

A Valentines gift for loved ones: capture their stories

February 14, 2012 in Authors, Education, Interviews, Oral History, Skype, Storytelling by msharpe  |  No Comments

Valentine’s day is a great time to begin capturing the stories of your loved ones to share with family members now and with future generations. Maybe your grandfather immigrated from Poland or Mexico or Japan and needs someone to help him remember his days “in the old country.” Perhaps your aunt not only has interesting personal stories to tell, but also served in the Kennedy or Reagan administrations and has valuable public oral history information to share.

Here are three methods to capture your family’s memories and share them with other family members. They all require some preparation, such as sending a letter or email message with suggested topics and questions.

Method # 1 – Meet with your family member in person. Take written notes or record the conversation. This is often the most desirable approach, especially if you have a close relationship with this family member. You can ask questions and takes notes or better yet, record the conversation as audio or video. We recommend recording in-person interviews using Evoca’s phone or online recorder methods. Evoca enables you to organize recordings in your online account by setting up Albums to which you assign the recordings. You can email links to individual recordings or Albums for playback, all while keeping the recording and Album settings at private. Transcription of audio recordings is possible using Evoca’s transcription service or by hiring another service or getting other family members to volunteer.

Hand-held digital audio recorders can be used, although there can be file formatting issues when later trying to share or manage. And recording into a computer is possible with the free software called Audacity or if you are a Mac user, Garageband. You can email individual files but run the risk of losing or misplacing the recordings if not well organized.

Method #2 – “Meet” with your family member by phone or Skype. Take notes or better yet, record the interview. It should not come as a surprise that many people, especially the elderly who do not get out much, really enjoy talking on the phone. Read more

Oral History Ode to Savannah Preservationist Lee Adler

February 13, 2012 in Humanities, Interviews, Journalists, Oral History, Savannah, Storytelling by msharpe  |  No Comments

In 2006 Evoca was honored to provide the technology and funding to record the oral histories of leaders in the Savannah historic preservation movement. These recordings were donated to the Georgia Historical Society. Notable among these leaders were Emma and Lee Adler, spearheading the Savannah movement with innovative methods and a persistent spirit that they generously shared with preservationists worldwide. Savannah mourns the loss of Lee Adler, who  passed away on January 29th at age 88. We were fortunate to have recorded Emma Adler, Lee Adler’s wife and long-time partner in the preservation movement.

Among the many citizens and professionals who have memorialized Lee Adler is David J. Brown, chief preservation officer at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington.”There’s not a preservation group in this country that doesn’t owe some debt of gratitude to the work of Lee Adler.” The recordings of Emma Adler are streamed below by Evoca. The entire collection of oral history interviews is available for listening at the Georgia Historical Society online profile.

In the February 1 AP news article about Adler, reporter Russ Bynum wrote, “Born into a wealthy Savannah family that owned a local department store, Adler’s passion for protecting the 18th and 19th century homes of Georgia’s oldest city was passed on by his mother. Elinor Grunsfeld Adler was among the seven women who launched the [Historic Savannah] foundation that her son would later lead. The women started the group in 1954 to show their outrage after the downtown City Market, where farmers sold their crops, was razed to make way for a parking garage.”

Daniel Carey, Foundation president and friend of Lee Adler, credits him with pioneering the use of a revolving fund to purchase and resell historic properties instead of raising funds one building at a time. Historic preservation organizations around the world has since used Lee Adler’s effective techniques.

Murem Sharpe, Evoca CEO, offered, “Evoca is ideal for capturing public oral histories, such as those we helped create and now archive and stream for anyone to listen and learn. In addition to in-person recording with the historian using the phone as a digital recorder or using our online computer recorder from their Evoca account, interviewers can record phone and Skype interviews.” These four interview methods are popular with both professional oral historians as well as family genealogists.

 

Give the gift of family stories using Evoca Call Recorder for Skype

December 22, 2011 in Facebook, Social Networking, Storytelling, Twitter by admin  |  No Comments

Hearing Grandma Maria’s stories about growing up on a farm. Nephew Marco’s first words. Uncle Fritz’s recollections about his life in the circus. Capturing and sharing their voices for posterity in a digital audio recording: Priceless.

Evoca offers its easy-to-use Evoca Call Recorder for Skype to capture, share, and archive family stories, oral histories, and special events as MP3 recordings. Skype call recording with Evoca is accomplished “in the cloud” with no downloads or updates required. It is like StoryCorps inside your phone or computer, without having to wait for a van to show up in your town every few years or have family members in the same place to record and preserve their stories.

Evoca enables its subscribers to easily record family stories using Skype or any type of phone, share the audio recordings via email for listening or downloading, save them in a private online album for convenient playback, or post to family and genealogy websites, blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter. Recording the audio stream of Skype video calls is another handy Evoca feature. Family members anywhere in the world can playback recordings from any mobile smartphone, tablet or computer. Burning a CD to send to non-technical family members is simple to do.

Evoca subscribers can interview family members between continents, across countries, or around the table. They also can invite family members to record their own voices using any of these three methods: 1 – Phone or Skype – subscriber registers up to 30 phone numbers or 30 Skype accounts of family members, so their recordings will be saved to the subscriber’s account; 2 – Recording by phone using a dedicated “family storytelling hotline” with an Evoca Local or Toll-Free Plan; 3 – Recording their voices using Evoca’s online recorder on a family website or blog.

Another quick gift idea is to give an Evoca Pro subscription to journalists, writers or bloggers to record their own voice, interviews and conference calls. As She Writes member Monique Fields said, “Every writer in the world should have an Evoca subscription!” The Evoca team agrees. A Free Trial subscription is available before upgrading to a Pro, Local or Paid Plan.