Congratulations All Around

If you’ve been to the main MCHP page, you know that the program has reached two important milestones: the completion of the year one teams and the unveiling of their community websites, and the selection of the next “group of eight.” It’s an exciting time full of celebrations and new beginnings.

A big round of applause to the 2008-2009 teams in Bath, Farmington, Hampden, Islesboro, Lubec, New Portland, Presque Isle, and Thomaston, for their efforts over this past year. You are the pioneers! The time, energy, and creativity you invested in the program will now go on to serve not only your communities, but also the eight new communities in immeasurable ways.

And a hearty Congrats! to the newly minted 2009-2010 teams in Bangor, Biddeford, Blue Hill, Cumberland/North Yarmouth, Guilford, Hallowell, Lincoln, and Scarborough. You are about to set out on a remarkable journey of community collaboration, treasure hunting, and storytelling your local history for your neighbors and beyond.

I’m so pleased to be taking this journey with you, and especially thankful for the experience that the year one teams have shared with us as we seek to make the 2009-2010 project year the best it can be.

As the summer unfolds, check back regularly for new posts. The new teams have now received their introductory packets and are beginning to prepare for Orientation–July 30 and 31 here at MHS in Portland. Meanwhile, we on staff will be checking in periodically with team leaders, prepping all the myriad details for Orientation, and developing a master project manual (think well-stuffed 3-ring binder) to get you all off on the right foot (just as long as you don’t drop it ON your foot!)

In the meantime, do call/email with any questions. We’re here to serve!

Cheers ~ Larissa, Community Partnership Coordinator

Islesboro: A Truly Collaborative Model

Remote, beautiful and exceptionally collaborative.  The Islesboro team has developed a project that has brought the small island community together, where adults and students are working alongside one another to share Islesboro’s history.  From the very beginning of their project, the team invited the entire community to share in brainstorming sessions about which historical topics should be explored and what resources might be available.  These sessions were not only helpful to the team, but also served to generate some real interest in the project.

Since those early sessions, students, teachers, and community members have been working to identify and digitize historical materials.  And the collaboration continues with each phase of the project!  The team leader and a high school student are working collaboratively on the narrative piece. The exhibits involve multiple community members and students – students have researched and digitized materials, community members will be writing the text, and students will be designing the exhibits for display on the community website. This type of collaboration is remarkable and a pleasure to see.

~ Kristie

Editing & Critique — The Thomaston Approach

As the MCHP teams move into writing and constructing exhibits, we’ve been talking about critique. The Thomaston group had a great idea. They’re all shooting to have draft essays for their exhibits done by February 1 so that they can use the February team meeting to have a critique and edit session. They’ll read the works and bring suggestions to discuss. That leaves them plenty of time to incorporate changes and polish their writing. Even the team members who don’t know the local history well have a valuable part to play — if a detail is unknown to them or is confusing then that’s a sign that the writer may need to make changes. Plus, they will likely get a whole lot done in just one sitting. This is a really great team approach to the exhibit work and I look forward to seeing how it goes.

The MCHP is all about collaborative team work and in group work, it’s important to give constructive and thoughtful feedback in a respectful way. You know this, I’m sure. But if it’s your work under the microscope it scan be stressful and nerve-wracking — and maybe some of the team members aren’t used to sharing their work publicly. On the other hand, we’re shooting for top quality stuff here so it’s important to carefully review the writing for clarity and accuracy. This is a crucial part of the MCHP and I’m curious to see how the different teams approach it. More on this later…
-Stephanie

Audio recorders for oral history

Oral history is hot — everyone is doing it and the interest continues to grow.  Now, there are good ways and bad ways to capture information in oral history, and like anything else it takes practice.  So find a training, read one of the gazillion good sources and practice (Contact me for a selected bibliography) .  I did an internship at Maine Public Radio a thousand years ago and the single best advice I got was: do not make your first interview that very important, once-in-a-lifetime one.  Save that until you’ve got a little mileage behind you and feel really comfortable.

If you’re considering buying an audio recorder I’ve got some sources for you.  Having done both radio and oral history, I really (really, really) believe that sound quality is extremely important.  Get good equipment & learn how to use it.  Always use a microphone (and headphones!) and if possible mic everyone talking on the recording.  People will roll their eyes and complain about these recommendations but really, this is ORAL history.  What good is a recording if you can’t hear or understand the speaker?  Plus, you or someone else may want to use that sound someday.  Get the best quality sound you can now because it opens up your options later on.  And, as I always say, if a blurry photo makes poor documentary evidence then isn’t poor quality sound in an oral history unacceptable?

Okay.  Lecture is over.

My favorite online source for equipment advice is this page from the Vermont Folklife Center, http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org/archive/res_audioequip.htm.  Those people really know their stuff and they spent a lot of time recording interviews in the field.  They keep this relatively up to date, as well.  The staff at Maine Folklife Center have always been very helpful, too.

In response to the blog post about Thomaston students doing oral history, a reader sent me the following link: http://www.americanmusical.com/content–id-45.  It is a store so I’m not recommending it, but it has a lot of recorders & lots of info.  A very good place to start shopping if you’re in the market.

-Stephanie

Application for 2009 MCHP

Hello all,

We’re starting to get calls about how to apply for the next MCHP cohort.  All of the information, including a new application, should be up on our site by mid January.  Please check there for updates (www.mainememory.net/mchp).  There will be some changes so stay tuned for that.  It’s going to be another exciting (and very busy, I’m sure!) year.

We’ve also had a lot of questions about eligibility.  The program is open to any community anywhere in the state.  As we did last year, we are looking for a good geographic, cultural and socio-economic diversity.  Big towns, small towns, mill towns, college towns.  French communities, Native communities, agricultural communities.  This is where maine is most diverse so think about the MCHP & MMN as a way to tell your community’s story.

In the meantime, there are some things you can do to prepare to apply.

1. Explore the Maine Memory Network (www.mainememory.net) and see how it works.  Since the primary goal of the MCHP is to create community websites about local history within MMN, it’ll only help your application if you understand what MMN is and how to use it.
2. Begin to assemble your community team.  A school, a library and an organization with historical collections should be the applying partners, along with any other interested organization.  This is a year-long commitment so participants should commit to seeing the project to completion.
3. Meet with your proposed team.  Think about what skills, experience and knowledge you all bring and think about whether or not there are others you need or want on your team.  Reading through the 2008  description will help.
4. When the 2009 application material becomes available everyone on your application team should read it and understand just what the program is.   Talk honestly about roles, expectations and what you hope to get out of the program.  You’ll be working with these people for a year so forming a strong collaboration from the beginning is essential.
5. Remember that this is not a genealogical project.  While all history can have components of family history, MMN is not a place to record family lines.
6. The MCHP targets grades 6-12 for participation.  Those grades are our focus and must be on a community team.  If you teach other grades and want to talk about options contact Kristie.
7. Give us a call with questions.  I can be reached at 653-9677 or you can call Kristie at 653-9287.  Or email us at sphilbrick@mainehistory.org or klittlefield@mainehistory.org.

I’m really looking forward to hearing from you about how the MCHP might work for you.  Hope this helps you get started.

-Stephanie

MCHP in the news

The community projects have been in the news a bit lately.  There are some interesting things happening among our eight teams and we want everyone to know.  Below are links to some online coverage (and hopefully the links live a while longer).  Let me know if you see some articles that I’ve missed.  And while I’m at it, here’s a link for the SAD #74 (New Portland) technology blog http://sad74tech.blogspot.com/2008/10/maine-community-heritage-project-new.html.

Thanks,

-Stephanie

http://www.workingwaterfront.com/articles/Islesboro-students-add-island-history-to-Maine-memory-network/12837/

http://www.villagesoup.com/print/Print.cfm?StoryID=135961

http://www.coastaljournal.com/website/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=945:bath-students-to-undertake-massive-history-project&catid=58:regional-news&Itemid=43

http://www.umpi.edu/news/releases/969-08-09025

http://www.dailybulldog.com/db/?p=187

Thomaston Students planning oral history interviews on the Great Depression

MPBN's Keith Shortall demonstrates interview techniques for tenth graders in Thomaston

Maine Public Radio Producer, Keith Shortall, visited Thomaston High School on November 18 to talk to students about interviewing for oral history.  Students there will be conducting oral histories with local residents on their memories of the Great Depression in Thomaston and Shortall spent some time with the students talking about interviewing skills.  He also did a live interview with his aunt, Signe Gardner of Thomaston, so the kids could see how to conduct an interview and ask questions.

Kristie and I had visited the previous week to talk with students about how to prepare for an oral history project.  Two sections of teacher Krystal Gamage’s Economics classes are gearing up to do oral history interviews with local people who remember the Great Depression.  While we explained the basics of oral history – what it is, why we do it and how to run the recording equipment, we also had some lively discussions about what the questions might be.  Each student came armed with 10 questions they might like to ask and we talked about them and added more to their list.  There were some really great questions and showed a real understanding of how to relate the history to the current state of our economy.  Even more surprising to us was how knowledgeable about how to ask a question so that you don’t end up with just yes and no answers.  We also discussed how you might gear questions to particular people – women, men, or those who were children at the time.  It became clear to all of us that many of these people were likely to have been kids during the Depression just because so much time has passed.  It was a very interesting day & the students were great at putting their ideas up for discussion.

Over Thanksgiving break students will contact their interviews and ask preliminary questions over the phone.  They’ll arrange a meeting date and conduct their interviews in December.  Once the interviews are complete, students will transcribe their interviews and pick 2 or 3 interesting clips to post on the Maine Memory Network and the Thomaston MCHP site.  The original recordings and transcripts will go to the Thomaston Historical Society and Thomaston Public Library.

More to come on this exciting project.  Stay tuned….

-Stephanie

Oral history & the loss of an idol

Very sad to hear of the passing of Studs Terkel. He was an important historian and storyteller who helped to democratize the telling of history. His stories of “ordinary” people in their own words made history come alive for us all and helped us see where we fit into history. He was a personal hero to me and after discovering his work as a teenager, I’ve spent a lot of my life recording stories and studying Maine history.

You might wonder just what Studs Terkel could have to do with the MCHP. Sure, he never worked with us and likely never even heard of our work. Still, I think there is a connection. Nearly everyone I talk to while visiting the MCHP towns mentions a desire to record local history stories and certainly there are people all over Maine doing just that. Terkel’s books like Working and The Good War gave us personal stories of American history and I think the personal nature of those stories has made us all realize that we can play a part in telling our history. I talk to people all the time who are starting an oral history project or who want to share their own story and are looking for an outlet. Oral history is a very democratic approach to history and anyone can do it — sure there are methods and approaches that you should use and it can be intimidating to think of recording equipment. It’s probably not as hard as you think, though. And I promise you: it’s loads of fun. What’s better than hearing stories and especially stories of people and places close to you? And believe me, there is nothing like having those recorded stories after the teller has passed away.

At Maine Historical Society, we’re very interested in seeing more oral history go up on the Maine Memory Network and have recently created guidelines for uploading audio or video files. There are oral history recordings all over the web but MMN offers a central place for Maine stories. We’ll be posting those guidelines soon but feel free to get in touch with me if you want more details.

-Stephanie (sphilbrick@mainehistory.org)

Farmington team plots GIS mapping points for MCHP project

Melanie Taylor Coombs and Nancy Porter plots GPS points for their MCHP maps.

The Farmington MCHP team has built a mapping component into their project. They are plotting several points on portable GPS units and then using that information to create maps for their Community Website. One of the team members central to this effort is Tyler Durand, an intern for the Center for Community GIS and a student at the University of Maine at Farmington. Tyler, along with the rest of the Farmington MCHP team are identifying historic sites important to their exhibits, capturing the coordinates and then will create maps that show the location of the sites while also providing links to more information. It should be a really interesting way to get into some of the collections and information they plan to share. What’s more they seem to be having a great time doing it — traipsing across fields, riding on back roads and talking to people around town as they map the coordinates. The reports I’ve heard back from them indicate that they’re finding lots of interesting things and picking up all kinds of stories from the landowners they meet.

Have fun everyone — don’t forget to wear your orange while you’re out there!

-Stephanie

Melanie Taylor Coombs, Director of the Farmington Public Library, scales new heights as she captures GPS coordinates for the Farmington MCHP project.

Bath Students Kickoff MCHP Expedition by Exploring Downtown

Bath 7th graders touring downtown Bath, October 1, 2008

Bath Middle School student at Bath Historical Society, Ocotober 1, 2008

The Bath MCHP team decided to have an introductory kickoff day for the students working on the project. In this case, the kids are 7th graders from the Black House team at Bath Middle (for those of us outside of the school world: kids are broken up into teams with groups and they cycle through all of their classes with this group). Since BMS uses expeditionary learning, the kids will approach the year as an investigation into local history. Groups of four kids will study one downtown building and look at the architecture, business use, the people there and any events related to that structure. In the process they will learn about local history while developing research and writing skills.

This orientation day was designed by the local MCHP group made up of Historical Society staff, Patten Free Library staff and the BMS teachers. The Kickoff was October first and 45 students arrived at Patten Free Library at 9 a.m. After introductions, they divided into three groups and cycled through three activities:

1. A walking tour and scavenger hunt.
2. An introduction to the MCHP and the Maine Memory Network.
3. Learning about historical collections at the Historical Society and how they can be used to investigate history.

The day went off without a hitch – well, it rained which always makes a walking tour much more fun. Still, the kids asked questions, participated in discussion and quickly associated information learned in one session with things they heard in the next. They had worked with their teachers earlier in the week to brainstorm what they already knew about Bath and what they wondered about but don’t yet know. That will serve as their benchmark and they’ll revisit those questions and assumptions throughout the year. In addition, they created their own maps of downtown Bath and designated the places of importance to them. The day was made all the stronger because the team (teachers and library & historical society staff) got together several times to plan the event. They even went on a dry run of the tour so that the teachers would know what the kids would learn and could better prepare them. All in all, a really impressive event. The Brunswick Times Record and the Coastal Journal joined us so we’re hoping to see ourselves in the paper, too.

The students were interested in the idea that they are one of only 8 towns in the state (in the country!) to be doing this and that they are the first to have access to the new Maine Memory Network tools to build web pages. But they were just as interested to learn that Maine’s first governor was from Bath and quickly remembered having seen the monument near Domino’s Pizza, – hey, we all have different landmarks in our towns. Maybe now they can say, it’s the Domino’s next to the Governor King monument.