Moore Free Library’s Community Memory Project
The Moore Free Library
In the Fall of 2020 the Moore Free Library in Newfane, VT started a community-wide interviewing/oral history project to preserve the memories of residents of their town and the surrounding towns of Williamsville, South Newfane and Brookline. A grant from the Institute of Library and Museum Services (IMLS) supports the project.
The Folklife Center partnered with Newfane’s library, conducting workshops for project volunteers on interviewing, audio recording and editing, basic digital archiving, and working with the Moore Free Library’s Community Memory website. Rachel Onuf, Director and “roving archivist” at the Vermont Historical Records Program also offered technical assistance to the Project on how to better preserve and provide access to historical records.
Promotional postcard for the Community Memory Project (courtesy Erica Walch)
Due to the pandemic, in fall 2020 we offered a series of hybrid-format workshops—volunteers gathered in-person outside the Library and VFC staff “visited” via Zoom. This fall we finally felt safe making the trip to Newfane, where we got to meet Library staff and volunteers in person to celebrate their accomplishments and prep new folks to continue work on the Community Memory Project.
Once trained, Library staff and volunteers handled every aspect of carrying out the Project. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the project has been remarkably successful, a testament to the dedication of the project coordinators and volunteers. As of this month, 65 interviews have been recorded, transcribed, archived, and made available on the project website.
Newfane’s Community Memory Project has been an amazing success—a model for how a small community can use interviewing as a way to engage community members and build a repository of local stories for the future. As the project moves into its second year, we wanted to hear what participants have to say about their efforts and the experience of working on the project. Thanks to those who shared their personal stories below (text has been shortened for clarity and brevity.)
Erica Walch - Founding Project Manager, Newfane, VT
Erica, how did this project get started?
The Community Memory Project got started because we found funding for it (through the IMLS's "Accelerating Promising Practices" grant program for small libraries). Laura Wallingford-Bacon, of the Windham County Historical Society, had made some audio recordings back in the 1990s and early 2000s of local people at the senior luncheons and other places. These were done on cassette tapes and feature a lot of background noise (think silverware and people laughing it up at the senior lunches). The elementary schools in Newfane and Brookline had also done oral history projects where students interviewed elders (relatives and strangers both) back in the 1980s or 1990s. I love history and I love listening to people — and I have found that many people like to be listened to and have a lot of good stories — and when I saw this opportunity, I thought we (the library and the historical society) could work together to get a 21st century project together with better production values and store the recordings on the web, which seemed longer lasting that physical tapes.
Laura and I collaborated with the NewBrook Elementary School, the VFC, Senior Solutions and Brattleboro Area Hospice and submitted an application for the first round of grants in 2019. We were rejected. The grant application came around again, and we submitted a pared-down version, eliminating the elementary school and just focusing on the library and the historical society as the main players, with the help of VFC and Rachel Onuf. And we were funded! So that's how we got started.
Soon after you got funded, Covid hit. How did you adapt to pandemic times?
Adapting to Covid was definitely a chore in 2020. Instead of having in-person training from the VFC, we did a hybrid model—VFC people were somewhere out in the “etherworld” and our trainees were in person at the library (and some took the training remotely). We set up a tent with a big screen TV (loaned to us by a patron) and sent all the power cords out the window so we could have the training outside on the library lawn. Some interviewers and interviewees were reluctant to be in person together, so we also offered interviews over Zoom. No matter what the technology (Zoom or digital recorder or cellphone), there were background noises or interruptions, but we managed to go with the flow and get a good number of interviews done. I bet we would have had the same number of volunteer interviewers even if Covid hadn't happened.
Why do you think this project is important?
I think this project is important for a couple of reasons—it makes a record of what people's everyday lives are like right now. I think researchers and historians (and regular old Joes) looking back at the Covid days will be interested to hear how ordinary people's lives were impacted by Covid and how people thought about it at the time, much like we were exposed to recordings of people's diaries about the 1918 flu epidemic. Spoiler alert—almost no one I interviewed reported much of a change in their lives at all in regards to Covid. Most were inconvenienced about not seeing their grandkids or not being able to go out to lunch, but almost everyone I interviewed said something to the effect of "it hasn't really changed my life at all. I feel really bad for the people who are suffering with this, but for me, it's been kind of a non-issue."
I also think the project is important for people to leave a record of their lives. All our lives are important, and we all have stories to tell. Some of the interviewees have lived through so many changes in our area—technological, social, etc.—and it's great for them to share that. One person who was interviewed died a few months later and her family played her interview at the memorial service. They were grateful to have that record of her voice and her life. There's something very intimate about hearing someone speaking, and these interviews are a lovely lasting tribute to the people who live or have lived in our community.
What would you say to someone who wanted to create their own community memory project?
For others looking to do a similar project, I'd say try to find some funding or a dedicated and reliable volunteer base. It takes a lot of time. For each hour-long interview, there's probably a good two hours of processing time between editing the audio, transcribing it and uploading it. That's a commitment. And getting someone with a good can-do attitude to coordinate the whole thing is important, and you're probably going to need to pay that person, unless you have a super-volunteer (which many communities do have). Make a plan, don't just wing it, and I'd definitely recommend connecting with the VFC for advice and expertise. It was the combination of IMLS funding, two good people in charge (me and Laura), dedicated volunteers, VFC and Rachel Onuf’s expertise, and garrulous townspeople that made this such a success.
Rachel Onuf - Director, Vermont Historical Records Program
As an archivist, I’m always interested in context, so I’ll provide some background about Newfane’s community memory project. In 2019, Moore Free Library Director Erica Walch attended a grant writing workshop that Joy Worland of the Vermont Department of Libraries and myself co-presented at various locales around the state. We worked with Erica on an application to the “Accelerating Promising Practices” grant opportunity offered by the IMLS. It was not successful. Undeterred, Erica continued to work with project partners to refine the proposal and resubmitted the following year. In June of 2020, the proposal was funded, one of only 15 community memory projects nationwide!
In the midst of the pandemic, Erica and the Vermont Folklife Center quickly adapted, offering training sessions online and in-person on the library lawn, adding training on how to conduct oral history interviews remotely, and working with motivated community members to ensure they were able to participate safely. By the end of the first year of the two-year project, Newfane had dozens of interviews available online; none of the other projects had managed to get off the ground. The resilience and tenacity of the project partners has been such an inspiration to me!
Beckley Gaudette - Current Project Director
The first year of the project has been an enormous success. At this mid-way point we find ourselves in a leadership change and while transitions always have an impact, the dedicated group of volunteers will keep the project on track.
The goals of the second year are much the same as the first: to continue to recruit and train volunteers; to add more interviews to the web-based archive; to finish digitizing the cassettes from the 2002 “Newfane Remembers” project and to create a structure for the project that can be sustained beyond the IMLS grant.
This year we also want to pay attention to the stories we are missing. We will look beyond ourselves to network with organizations that can help us reach people who are not already represented in the archive. We will also be working on a structure for the project that is manageable beyond the grant. These steps include work with the host organization, the Moore Free Library, a mentoring system that brings new volunteers into the project, identifying other funding sources, collaborating with both state and local organizations that want to be connected to the project, and working with local libraries to help them get their own project up and running.
I want to end by recognizing our funder, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and the organizations that have provided invaluable resources: Wisconsin Library Services (WiLS), the Vermont Folklife Center, and the Vermont Historical Records Program. Our local partners are the Historical Society of Windham County, Senior Solutions and Brattleboro Area Hospice.
Pat Halloran - Project Volunteer, Newfane, VT
How did you become involved with the Community Memory Project?
I got involved in this project by word of mouth with my friend Laura [Wallingford-]Bacon. Laura has been involved in oral history in the town of Newfane for a long time, and I was approaching my retirement from Keene State College. Laura suggested that I'd have lots of time on my hands so why didn't I participate in the Community Memory Project? And the more she talked about it, the more interested I became. So I contacted Erica Walsh, who was our then librarian [and then director of Community Memory], about the project.
What was it like volunteering for Community Memory?
I think what was really important for me is that Erica was clearly fully involved in the project and really knowledgeable about the process of interviewing and the technology involved. So that kind of leadership I think, has been really important to the success of this program. It's also important for the project coordinator to know the desires, the intentions of volunteers and I really had no interest in using the microphone or interviewing face to face [during Covid lockdown]. So it was fine to do all of my interviews on a platform that I was comfortable with, which was Zoom. The experience of sitting down and listening to somebody's story is just terrific. And you don't know that experience until you do it. So just stepping forward and taking that first plunge, I think is important.
What would you say to someone just starting out as an interviewer?
Well, you know, feel comfortable with yourself. Develop a framework that you can rely on again, regardless of who you interview. So it's kind of who you are when you approach the person you're interviewing, and you can fall back on that. It's not a limiting framework, but it's a reliable framework.
How do you see the value of doing a project like this?
Well, I think the value is certainly a local history that is colorful and informative, and it just gives a real sense of being for anybody who listens to the interviews as well as to those who participate as an interviewee or an interviewer. It's great to get the stories of people who have been here for a while or who have lived here for a long time and then moved out. But I'm also a big fan of more of our younger population, and I think that brings a great deal of value to what it means to live in Brookline and Newfane and our different little villages around. Why would people come here and live here? That in itself, builds a sense of story and pride for those folks who live here.