Athens, Ga. – The next interviews for the First Person Project, an oral history series documenting the experiences of everyday Georgians, are set for Sept. 13 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. in the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries at the University of Georgia. The theme is “It was a Big Year.”
The project is looking for stories about years of change, time periods that reshaped the lives of individuals.
Six sets of partners will be accepted for this First Person Project session. Participants are invited to discuss a year that changed their lives, or a year that when national or international events made them rethink ideas about politics, religion or social relations.
Each audio recording session takes one hour to complete. Photographs will also be taken for each session. The Russell Library for Political Research and Studies will archive the interviews to add to its documentation of life in post-20th century Georgia and will provide participants with a free digital download of the recording and photographs. A $10 donation is suggested for each pair of participants. Reservations are on a first-come first-serve basis and can be made by calling 706-542-5788 or registering online at http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell/fpp/fpp_register.html.
Participants should meet in Room 268 of the Russell Special Collections Building, 300 S. Hull St., in Athens.
This day of oral history is part of It Was a Big Year, a program series inspired by the exhibit “Now and Then: 1973,” currently on display in the Russell Library Gallery at the Russell Building. For more information on other programs in the series, see http://rbrl.blogspot.com/search/label/BigYear.
About the First Person Project
Modeled roughly on StoryCorps, a national initiative partnered with National Public Radio and the Library of Congress, the First Person Project at UGA is smaller in scale but similar in concept, providing tools to would-be oral history interviewers and interviewees, including tips on how to create questions and conduct interviews. The project was inspired by the belief that everyone is an eyewitness to history, and that everyone, sometimes with a little encouragement, has a story to tell. For more information on this event and other upcoming First Person Project days, email russlib@uga.edu or call 706-542-5788. To learn more about the Richard B. Russell Library, see http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell.