finally, some understanding.

For the final project, we are doing an exhibit project. I think the best way that oral history can contribute to our exhibit proposal is through digital media and through displaying text and photographs. If we conducted interviews with people that live in the neighborhood, we could film them and create a video that could be a part of the final exhibit. The interviews and the people themselves could be a prominent part of the neighborhood. Depending on the information that surfaces through our research, oral history could definitely be utilized as a tool for a physical exhibit.

I was interested in looking through Jan Shetler's Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library, a project where she is digitizing her personal research so many people, including her interviewees, are able to access it. but the link we had was corrupt. More on that later.

Through reading the chapter on oral history and unpublished documents in Nearby History, I came to better understand the process of interviewing. I feel well introduced to the unpublished documents and the basics of interviews, but I have never actually conducted one. Joe Springer also spoke about the interview process with his work on the Veteran's History Project.

As I think through it more, I am excited to see what my classmates have uncovered with their own house histories. Perhaps it will finally lead to a 'big picture' understanding of the neighborhood. We have talked about a large Latino presence, but I have not seen any real data supporting that in my own research. I wonder how that data can be accessed? I'm sure that there are tools, but I haven't stumbled upon them yet. I think the thing that I am lacking from this research is a story. I'm not as interested in a name, or an occupation as I am in a story. Who were these people? How did they live their lives? Who's lives did they touch and who touched theirs? What were their heartaches, their happiness, and their life's purpose? Those are the things that I am looking forward to teasing out further through this project. Maybe with some more work it can get to be a little bit more personal.

A section from Nearby History, page 113:

"'...the new social history,' that is, the history of the nonelite, of men and women in ordinary walks of life. Some individuals among them stood out from others, of course, and they should receive the attention they deserve, but historians of the nearby past should not ignore the opportunity to draw composite sketches of anonymous folks who though the years have played important but unheralded and so far unrecorded parts in the communities, institutions, and families to which they belonged."

I think I finally understand.