FAQs

Bringing an OurStoryBridge project to your community represents an appreciation of the history that shaped it. This is a celebration of what makes it what it is today, and what it can become tomorrow. There may be closer bonds between residents and connections that lead to neighborly acts of kindness, assistance, and support in times of need. Stories that could be lost as residents age will be preserved and younger generations will begin to appreciate their heritage. These are among the many potential benefits.

Community members can immediately help by participating in focus groups to brainstorm relevant categories of stories and potential storytellers. They can volunteer to collect stories themselves, tell stories early on in the project’s implementation, as well as help execute the project’s logistics. They can help continuously to recruit storytellers and create buzz and positive momentum around the project, in order to expand its reach exponentially. You should solicit community members for funding recommendations, even asking appropriate people for donations. If your community has a newsletter or bulletin board (analog or digital), they can help you post information that can be widely shared. Ask your community members to share social media posts to help spread information about the Partner Project.

Libraries, museums, historical societies, tribal councils, and issue-oriented nonprofit organizations are the most obvious sponsors for your Partner Project, but any organization, for example, profit-based, nonprofit, government, or educational, can run an OurStoryBridge Partner Project. Some nonprofits with chapters collect stories posted on one website to educate about their work and promote their organization. The possibilities are endless!

Differing from long-format traditional oral histories, OurStoryBridge offers a responsive and flexible methodology suited for 21st-century media and our markedly shrinking attention spans. OurStoryBridge’s free online tool kit and resources guide you through how to collect the nuanced histories of your community through brief three-to five-minute audio stories coupled to scrolling photos, creating miniplayers shared freely via embed/HTML codes on your website. These easy to digest personal narratives are retained in an online format that is accessible to both young and old.

The OurStoryBridge methodology aligns with the Oral History Association (OHA) Best Practices on how to conduct high-quality oral history interviews. OurStoryBridge was designed by a librarian whose training facilitated the archivalundefined and people-oriented aspects of that methodology.

We recommend a separate website to post your stories, which can be linked to your organization’s primary website. This serves as a designated home for your oral histories, keeping your primary website focused. You should link your Partner Project website to your primary website and to any others that will help it gain visibility. This will also help you to gather metrics on the success and reach of your Partner Project.

Launching an OurStoryBridge project typically takes six to nine months, from the initial planning and preparation phase through to the implementation phase. You can expect to collect, produce, and share your first stories within this timeframe.

Story categories are designed to be reflective of the unique community from which individual stories are collected. Focus groups can help to determine these categories. Keep in mind that a story can be posted in more than one category. Consider visiting the OurStoryBridge Stories page on our website to view other projects and the categories they have created.

The most effective recruitment tool is word-of-mouth, as well as in-person communication at events and locations throughout the community. Following up these interactions with emails, texts, and/or calls to schedule storytelling sessions works well. Getting Board members and important members of your community to tell initial stories, then commit to recruiting others, is important. The Storyteller Worksheet is used to log potential storytellers and record their involvement and serves as a live document to recruit storytellers. Likewise, a variety of marketing efforts can create awareness of your Partner Project by sending people to the project’s website, which in turn demonstrates the impact of stories collected.

Recording one story takes three to five minutes. However, there are other steps to account for, such as recruiting the storyteller, working with them to prepare and practice their story, obtaining photographs, and reviewing and posting the story. This entire process can take up to 45 to 60 minutes in total, but is usually shorter, and can be stretched over several days. For repeat storytellers it usually takes no more than 30 minutes total.

Personnel recommendations are just that, recommendations. Each OurStoryBridge project will vary in personnel dedicated to the project, dependent upon use of paid staff, volunteers and consultants, speed of story collection, funds available, etc. Jobs can be combined, and several people can collect stories, as long as they are carefully trained and monitored, and processes are in place for coordination, e.g., use a shared Google calendar with storytelling sessions scheduled and storytellers assigned by color. The Sample Personnel Responsibilities Chart provided in this User Guide presents a sample breakdown of the core team with their roles and responsibilities. In any case, one person should review all stories before publication. Note that personnel needs are generally reduced after the first year a Partner Project is online.

You will find that most of the technology and procedures are intuitive, with the majority of the experience needing to be with now-commonplace platforms such as Gmail, Google Drive, and Microsoft Office Suite (or Google’s equivalents). The more idiosyncratic platforms for recording and posting stories, creating podcasts, etc. have their own Help Centers to assist you, and tutorials for all of these can be readily found online. The OurStoryBridge User Guide provides ample detail to assist you as well, and to place the technical needs of the project into context.

Forming collaborations, both internal and external to your community, can help you to raise and sustain funding, increase the number of storytellers, assist in the obtaining of photos, increase website traffic, find volunteers, and provide any number of opportunities to maximize the project.

The Teacher’s Guide is a collaboration between OurStoryBridge and its Partner Projects. It is updated frequently to add the latest stories and podcasts from across the country, categorized by subject and with hyperlinks to each story. Educators and librarians can engage their students in the media that compels them, enhancing the learning experience. The SchoolStoryBridge Curriculum is a great resource to share with teachers for collaborations on student storytelling.

To protect their privacy, storytellers under the age of 18 should not give their names. Additionally, no photos will be used. These storytellers will need to have their Parent or Guardian complete the Sample Parent Guardian Permission Form, which the Partner Project should retain in the Google Folder for the specific story.

Our full suite of tools can be found at www.ourstorybridge.org.

There is no set cost for an OurStoryBridge project. Estimated costs for informational purposes only, can be found in this User Guide. Your budget depends on use of staff, volunteer, and consultant services available and chosen marketing methods.

Partner Projects source their own funding. Your organization may include financial support of your community’s Partner Project in their budget. Grants have proven to be especially helpful in setting up and sustaining projects. Nonprofit organizations, libraries, historical societies, local governments, foundations, local businesses, corporations with local presence, educational institutions, media outlets, and individual donors can also be solicited for funding. Use your community network to brainstorm creative funding ideas and opportunities. OurStoryBridge can guide you to services which can help you apply for grants.

No, this is a volunteer effort. On a related note: storytellers who may be wary of participating or especially nervous consistently complete their storytelling sessions by saying, “This was fun; I have to tell my friends!”

The copyright to the full story as recorded belongs to the storyteller and they can have the story removed as they wish. The Partner Project is given rights by the storyteller (in Memria) to edit, publish, and share the story, and use the storyteller’s full name (or choose to be anonymous). Additionally, the storyteller (in Memria) gives further rights allowing Memria.Org, a project of VoxBox, Inc., and OurStoryBridge Inc. and any third party authorized by them to edit, publish, and share the story.

If you find yourself ready to collect a story and don’t have access to a computer or WiFi, consider using an app on your phone like Voice Memos. After recording the story you’ll easily be able to upload the audio onto Memria. If you do this, be sure to have a hard copy of the Memria Permissions Form available, or the storyteller’s contact information to send the form, and make sure it's completed before publishing the story in Memria. You can find the form in the Sample Documents section of our website. You will file the form in the Google Folder related to the story.

Absolutely! The OurStoryBridge User Guide outlines how to accomplish this through self-recorded stories.

Per Memria (1/16/22), “Clients can export their entire story collection data at any time through the Story Request Dashboard. Our export tool exports all the HTML, audio, text and photographic data for each story request in a form that enables client to host their projects as static webpages on their own website. This does not include any functionality to collect, edit or share the stories. It also does not include the embedded mini player. If a client requests Memria to delete all their data after they’ve exported their stories, any mini players embedded on their website will disappear.”

Go to Memria Data and Security Information or additional details.

Per Memria (1/16/22), “Once a client’s subscription ends, published stories continue to be available through their Public Stories Page. Any mini players embedded on the client’s website will cease to display. Clients will no longer be able to login to their accounts to access unpublished stories or collect additional stories.”

Go to Memria Data and Security Information for additional details.

Very important! The suggestions for communications, marketing, and public relations presented in the OurStoryBridge User Guide are extensive. Be sure to adapt this information to the availability of personnel resources in your community and for your Partner Project, and to the opportunities/venues for sharing the collected stories.

Check the OurStoryBridge website at www.ourstorybridge.org for links to new projects as they are released.

As you plan your project, you should be creating a sustainability plan for the future of your project. Minimal funding is required to continue a Partner Project after its first year. As an historical resource, it is hoped that each local Partner Project continues as long as possible.

If you need additional support beyond the OurStoryBridge User Guide and training materials, we invite you to contact us at createyourstoryproject@gmail.com. We can provide direct assistance via telephone, email, Zoom, and in-person meetings. Our work is dependent on funding, but substantial services are supplied by volunteers.

In 2022 OurStoryBridge became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, supported by donations and grants. The OurStoryBridge tools and resources are free, and OurStoryBridge is available to help you; however, we appreciate donations from Partner Projects who use our services, which can be made via the OurStoryBridge website.