The Net’s Late Bloomers
Computer use among elders in a NYT (3/25/04) article
NYT Article (Mar 25, 2004) by Katie Hafner
Once largely written off as a lost cause, older Americans are now coming into their own as Internet users. They are researching their family histories, sending e-mail, running virtual book clubs, reading about religion and travel, and pursuing other interests lifelong and new.
According to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a research organization in Washington, the ranks of Americans over 65 who use the Internet have jumped by 47 percent since 2000, making them the fastest-growing group to embrace the online world.
...Susannah Fox, director of research at Pew, said the biggest factor pushing older Americans toward ...Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 10, 2004 in
• General
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Recordings preserve adventures long past
Santa Cruz Sentinal story by Claudia Sternbach
May 9, 2004
SANTA CRUZ — Santa Cruz residents Janet Herman and Lisa Noble know family stories are important but often are lost as the years go by, along with heirloom quilts and a grandmother’s recipe for raspberry jam.So the two women, who run an oral history and audio recording service called Lasting Voices, decided to volunteer some time recording the stories of seniors who take classes and meet for lunch at Louden Nelson Community Center
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 09, 2004 in
• Oral history in the news
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Audacity: open source sound editor
Open source sound editor for Mac, Windows, Linux
Audacity is an open source application that’s developed for Mac, Windows, and Linux. What is Audacity (and what can it do?)? Here’s the answer given at the Sourceforge.net site, Audacity’s home:
Audacity is a free audio editor. You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, and MP3 files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings. It also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Echo, Change Tempo, and Noise Removal, and it also ...Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on in
• Audio: Software
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Scrapbooking family history
Better Homes & Gardens has a Family Heritage Scrapbooking section on its site.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 02, 2004 in
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David Galbraith: online genealogy Archives
David Galbraith’s weblog has an Online Genealogy category.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on April 29, 2004 in
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Students Keep History Alive in Talks With Seniors
Talking with Seniors (L.A. Times, reg required)
Members of a Pierce College sociology class are writing biographies of participants in an older adult program held at the school.
For some seniors, the sessions provide an opportunity to ponder what they still want to accomplish.
“It’s a wonderful way for students to learn historical events in a personal context. Older adults can begin to figure out where they will be in the decades ahead,” said Donna Benton, a USC assistant research professor in gerontology. She runs the Los Angeles Caregiver Resource Center at USC’s Andrus Gerontology Center and is familiar with the process called life review.
It also gives students a chance to dispel stereotypes about seniors and become more comfortable with the aging process, Benton said.
“[Before the interviews] young people might think that older people aren’t sexual ...Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on in
• Oral history in the news
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Survivors of the SHOAH
An online history collection with first-person accounts of Holocaust survivors
Shoah Visutal History Foundation
This is taken from the FAQ (which is in a pernicious PDF format that does not allow selecting and copying text):
1n 1994, after filming Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation as a nonprofit organization to document the experiences of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, including those who aided, rescued, and liberated the survivors. Beacuse of the advanced age of most of the survivors and other witnesses, the Foundation’s mission was particularly urgent.
In each testimony [the term they use to refer to their oral history interviews] , one survivor or other witness speaks about his or her ...Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on in
• Online Oral History Collections
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Genealogy in the News
News stories about Genealogy.
(I wonder if it’s got an RSS feed. I didn’t see one on the page) Genealogy in the News is a service of genealogysearch.org, pointing out newsstories relevant to Genealogy. I found one that was interesting…
* Growing your family tree
The thrill of making connections between the past and present is one of the reasons genealogy has become the second-most-popular hobby in the United States after gardening. Newsday (NY), March 15, 2004.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on in
• Links
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Veterans History Project
The Veterans History Project: Sponsored by the U.S. Congress (elsewhere I’ve seen Library of Congress), AARP, and the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Charitable Service Trust.
The Veterans History Project focuses on World War I (1914-1920), World War II (1939-1946), and the Korean (1950-1955), Vietnam (1961-1975), and Persian Gulf (1990-1995) wars. It includes all participants in those wars—men and women, civilian and military. It documents the contributions of civilian volunteers, support staff, and war industry workers as well as the experiences of military personnel from all ranks and all branches of service—the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy, as well as the U.S. Coast ...Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on April 28, 2004 in
• Oral History Projects
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From a blurb in a Michigan paper
This is one time when the words moderator and boring in the same sentence may not spell out punishment. (and when I was in grade school I hated my last name, too.)
The Freedom Series: “Air War in the Pacific” moderated by Frank Boring, director of oral history and programs, Michigan Military Preservation Society, at 9:30 a.m.Tuesday at Caledonia High School, 9757 Duncan Lake Ave. SE, Caledonia, free, call 974-1955.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on in
• Oral history in the news
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Man finds roots using oral history
Tate County Democrat story about Melvin Collier’s search into his family’s past.
Collier’s quest to find his family roots has led him in many directions. He has learned a great deal through oral history—by talking to older relatives recounting stories of days gone by. “You know, without this, I could never have gotten as far as I have. The oral history is extremely important,” Collier said. Collier has also spent a lot of time searching census, marriage, death, birth and social security records in an effort to find out about his family. “It takes a lot of work, but it is something that I love to do,” he stated.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on April 27, 2004 in
• Oral history in the news
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ARTICLE: Oral history project explores women in science
From the Univeristy of Wisconsin an article about a woman faculty member whose experiences as a first woman faculty member has been recorded in the University of Wisconson-Madison archives Oral History Project.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on April 26, 2004 in
• Oral history in the news
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Listen & Type
MacOS shareware app for playing audio files in order to transcribe them.
The playback window always goes in front of whatever other app you’re working with (Word?), and the playback is controlled via key commands. Download it from Nattaworks. Available in two flavors: MacOS X and MacOS 8/9
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on April 23, 2004 in
• Audio: Software
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Turn your iPod into a digital recording device
Record oral history conversations using Griffin Technology’s iTalk, which turns your iPod into a Voice Recorder.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on in
• Audio: Hardware
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Oral History and The Bomb
Los Alamos Monitor story on UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project
Lecture by the director of the UNLV NTSOHP (now that’s a mouthful!), Mary Palevski.
In her lecture, Palevsky will discuss “Atomic Fragments” and how it led to her current work directing the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project at UNLV, during which oral history interviews are being conducted with over 150 individuals affiliated with the site in a variety of capacities during the Cold War. She will be conducting several interviews while in New Mexico
The article also discusses a bit about Oral History itself:
Although oral traditions are as old as humankind, the discipline of oral history came into being in the 20th century, with the rise of recording technologies. Palevsky will discuss the value of oral methods when researching and documenting nuclear history ...Read More
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• Oral history in the news
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