Very good, now this is me encouraging you to set aside one hour of your time to listen. Just to listen. Story Corp’s National Day of Listening, which falls on November 27^th, was established to encourage each and every one of you to sit down and record a conversation with someone who is important to you.  Story Corps offers a free, downloadable, Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide to help you prepare your interview questions, record your interview, and guide you towards resources for sharing your stories.  This is an amazing opportunity to spend time with a friend or family member, hear new stories, and preserve those stories for future listeners. Story Corps’ National Day of Listening website offers resources to get you started and showcases stories collected from participants across the United States. I would also encourage you to visit the Story Corps website to hear additional stories and learn about the largest oral history project, of its kind, in the world.

Red Alexander: Shipwright and Folk Artist

Film by Archie Green and Chris Simon

Folkstreams.net is awesome! The mission of Folkstreams.net is to preserve “hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures” and to give them new life by making them available to the public by streaming the films online. Folkstreams has an amazing collection of independently produced cultural documentaries along with essays, teaching guides, and links to further reading on featured subjects. Simply great storytelling.

(Red Alexander: Shipwright and Folk Artist, featured above, is just one of many films showcased on Folkstreams.net)

Quilt and Quiltmaking in America 1978-1996 is a collection of 229 digitized photographs and 181 sound recordings from two Library of Congress American Folklife Center collections, the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection (1978) and the “All-American Quilt Contest”.

This collection is part of the American Memory Project, a website created by the Library of Congress with the intent of providing, “free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.”

Quilt and Quiltmaking in America is just one of the wonderful collections available through this website and highly recommend taking some time to poke around. The collections are browsable by subject, material, time period, or region.

If you are interested in using photographs, recordings, or other materials featured on the American Memory Project website in your personal projects please read this first.

Featured in this audio clip:

Interviewer: Geraldine N, Johnson

Quiltmaker: Zenna Todd

Alice Elliott began producing documentary films in her mid 40s after over twenty years of acting in feature films, commercials, and television. Elliott’s film The Collector of Bedford Street was nominated for an Academy Award and she is currently in production for several documentaries including, Two Weddings and a Future about the Christian and Hindu weddings of Carrie and Sujeet Desai, a couple with Down Syndrome. In this audio clip Alice discusses how she chooses her subjects, or more accurately, how her subjects choose her, with NPR’s John Kalish.

(If this clip won’t play click here to hear the story on NPR’s website)

Jamendo is an online community of musicians who publish their music under the Creative Commons License, making it free and legal to download. I downloaded a song a couple of weeks ago to use in a short video and was surprised at how easy it was. Their website is also well designed and conducive to browsing. The music selection is somewhat limited and I didn’t recognize any of the artists but it could be a great resource for discovering new music.

Under the Creative Commons License, music can be used for non-commercial purposes, as long as the artist is attributed, but Jamendo also offers music licenses if you need music for commercial use. Jamendo is all about sharing, so if you are a musician you can set up an account and upload your own music as well.

Radio Diaries is a non-profit organization that works with people to record their personal stories. I first heard a Radio Diaries segment on NPR’s This American Life and was instantly hungry for more. Lucky for me, Radio Diaries has a website full of MP3s as well as other great oral history resources like their Teen Reporter Handbook, a guide for anyone (not just teens) interested in learning how to conduct interviews and document their lives.

New York Works is a series of audio portraits of people living in New York City and working in professions that are slowly fading into the past. Walter Backerman, Seltzer Man is one of my favorites.

The University of Texas at Austin’s Radio/Television/Film Department has easily downloadable production releases on their website. The most commonly used ones are all there including the ever popular Actor Release and Location Release and then there are those less frequently used, yet important nonetheless, like the Weapons Policy. Dig in!

Moby has set up mobygratis.com for non-profit filmmakers and film students to download music at no charge for use in non-commercial film and video projects. All that Moby asks is that you sign up on his website by setting a username and password and then you are free to browse and download available music. Thanks Moby!

Also, check out the Moby Gratis channel on Vimeo which showcases projects created using free Moby music.

To create a documentary resource center in Portland that will not only enhance NW Documentary’s educational programs but also serve as an asset to our entire community. Our unique collection of materials will include documentary films produced by local filmmakers, books and resources on the subject of documentary production, local music for use in our student’s films, and organized links to online films and educational resources.

The Library @ NW Documentary will support and promote our organization’s mission to encourage and inspire local storytellers by providing access to this special collection of materials and resources.

The NW Documentary Library, May 2009. Watch it grow.