American History Workshop
Telling Lives: The Video Memory Bank

Give us ten minutes, and we?ll put you in history!

Finally, a way for history museums and libraries to hear, remember,
and respond to what their visitors say

Telling Lives is an easy, convenient, and inexpensive way for museums, historic sites, and libraries to collect and digitally record stories from visitors.

For participants, Telling Lives is

• A great new interactive tool for learning, by connecting personal narratives to larger historical contexts
• A way to animate the visit experience, by contributing actively to the institution?s store of knowledge

For cultural organizations, Telling Lives can

• Involve key constituencies in developing stories and themes for research, exhibits, and programs, and for building up archival and artifact collections 
•  Reveal how actual and potential visitors think about history and their personal connections to the past
•  Create interpretive media which spark dialogues with visitors

For scholars, educators, and artists, Telling Lives is

• An unparalleled archive of personal narratives documenting the history of everyday life in 20th-century North America
• A database for constructing research studies, educational curricula, and art pieces from thousands of individual stories