Voices of the Pioneers

Update: The links, they are fixed.

One of the best features of Cleveland Historical are the one-minute movies that they have created for many sites. These movies mostly consist of some images (12-15 it seems) and a soundtrack which is an excerpt from an oral history. It is an effective method of presentations. If only we had some oral histories for Spokane, already digitized and easily accessible!

We do. EWU graduate student in Public History Shaun Reeser has been working on an MA project to digitize a set of oral histories from the Spokane Public Library and to get them ingested into the audio holdings of the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives. The last part has not happened yet, but he has digitized the collection and created and index.

The Voice of the Pioneers project was an oral history program that the Spokane Public Library sponsored from the 1956-1971. The collection includes about 60 interviews with eyewitnesses to Spokane history. The interviews span such topics as Spokane Garry, the Great Fire, and where Bing Crosby liked to party.

As A temporary measure I have uploaded the interviews to Google Docs. To locate an interview of interest first look at the two indices. This index [PDF] was created by the Spokane Public Library. According to Reeser it is detailed but incomplete--not all of the interviews are indexed. The first index may give you a good idea of which interviews are worth your attention, but you also need to look at this spreadsheet which Reeser compiled which matches up the names to the file numbers of the audio files. You can listen to and download all of the audio here. Again:

1. Start with the Spokane Library index of the collection and make note of which interviews are of interest:

2. Then check out the spreadsheet to locate the file numbers.

3. Then go here to listen to or download the files.

Cleveland Historical Roundup

Here is a collection of links and resources for the Cleveland Historical App that we will be adapting for our use in Spokane:

First, here is the test version of a website to go with the app. The map placemarks have all the same content as the mobile app.  In time the site will have additional functionality including the ability to design custom walking tours and to create brochures. Mobile tours without the smart phone! Spokane Historical will have all the same features.

Here is a page with links to the iPhone and Android apps, if you do have a smart phone.

Mark Tebeau and his team have created a number of Powerpoint presentations and resources:

• Adding Sites to the Cleveland Historical iPhone App is probably the most useful to you
• Taking History Out of the Classroom and Into the Community (Part 2) is the presentation Tebeau made to our class
• Here is the storyboarding template [PDF]

Finally, for now, here is the YouTube channel with all of their videos.

I'll post additional resources as they become available.