Blog Posts by Subject: Oral history

Since 1974, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has been conducting a Dance Oral History Project with renowned dance professionals.  As the Oral History Archivist, I oversee this remarkable collection of over 450 voices and continue to add to it annually.  These unedited and in-depth audio interviews  capture the personalities, creative process, and relationships in the dance field that 

The goal of the neighborhood history project is to collect, document, and archive LES history through the eyes of local residents.

Collect NYC stories and make history. Volunteers needed in the LES, Chinatown, and Kips Bay.

We’re looking for volunteers to fill a new leadership role in this program and help build local collection efforts by facilitating oral history trainings and assisting the project manager in engaging volunteers through community events and regular communication.

Volunteer interviewers from the NYPL Community Oral History Project went on tour this month to the Delacorte Theater in Central Park to talk to people in line for The Public Theater’s annual Free Shakespeare in the Park. As regulars will tell you, waiting in line at the Delacorte is a truly unique city experience.

Dr. Brown was one of the Tuskegee Airmen and a squadron commander 100th Fighter Squadron of the 332nd Fighter Group. This was Dr. Brown's last major interview before he passed away on July 2, 2016.

We deposit into our archives a transcript of every interview conducted as part of the Oral History Project. These are nearly all available for use on-site at the library.

For the month of May, we’re showcasing thirty-one of the extraordinary stories that have been shared by New Yorkers throughout our city as part of The New York Public Library’s Community Oral History Project.

Gwen and Frank discuss books that defy description and throw reality for a loop. Longtime residents of Harlem, Greenwich Village, the Bronx, and more get shout-outs in an interview with NYPL's Alex Kelly about the Library's oral history projects.

Are you familiar with the NYPL Community Oral History Project? Take a few moments to listen to some highlights or just dive right into our full collection of stories.

The NYPL Community Oral History project has some exciting new tools to help make our growing collection more searchable! We recently received a Knight Foundation Prototype Grant in collaboration with The Moth  to process our audio stories using Pop Up Archive's software and to engage people from around the city and the 

A guest post from volunteer Kaitlin McClure about her experience tagging and transcript correcting.

Jefferson Market Library is looking for volunteers to loan us small, personal objects that tell a story.

In 1997, The Moth began hosting storytelling events around the country, and in 2013, we were lucky enough to share in The Moth experience at Live from the NYPL. On that night, The Moth founder George Dawes Green, writer Andrew Solomon, and The Moth's long-time Artistic Director Catherine Burns joined us. For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present The Moth on the Power of Storytelling.

This is a guest post from volunteer, Joanne Dillon. Joanne has interviewed several people for the NYPL Community Oral History Project and continues to share her experience and the experience of others who are participating in this historic initiative.

The StoryCorps Black LGBTQ Archive is now available at the Schomburg Center.

Volunteers share their stories about capturing Harlem's history through interviews with residents.

This is a guest post by Joanne Dillon, interviewer for Visible Lives: Oral Histories of the Disability Experience at Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library.

April is National Autism Awareness Month, dedicated to educating the public about one of the fastest growing developmental disabilities. The New York Public Library’s “Visible Lives: Oral Histories of the Disability Experience” project recently interviewed two young men, who shared their very different experiences coping with life on the autism spectrum.

As a child, Dalton Whiteside moved with his mother from Tennessee to Europe and North Africa and then to New York