Digital Spotlight: The Big Top Show

THE BIG TOP SHOW GOES ON is an oral history project focusing on the culture associated with the circus.

Contents: This oral history project was developed to preserve the voices associated with the tradition of the American “Big Top” circus. The collection contains interviews, video segments, classroom activities and additional resources.

Classroom Connections: Classroom activities aimed at grades four through six are available in the PDF format. Students will enjoy watching the videos associated with the project. The additional resources section contain an excellent set of links to extend the experience.

Featured Digital Objects:
Activities https://library.okstate.edu/…/circus/big-top-classroom-act…/
Popcorn the Circus Comic http://dc.library.okstate.edu/…/collect…/circus/id/212/rec/5
Videos https://library.okstate.edu/oralhis…/…/circus/big-top-videos

To visit the collection, go tohttps://library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/digital/circus/.

Technology Review: StoryCorps

STORY CORPS is a nonprofit oral history project.

The website allows users to listen, watch, and read oral history recordings as well as record their own stories at the traveling StoryBooth. Users can search by collections, themes, initiatives and locations. Or, browse the collection. Participants can also explore collections of stories on topics such as veterans stories, September 11th stories, and love stories.

The easy-to-use app provides access to the oral history, along with tools to record their own stories.

Librarians will find this project to be a wonderful way to immerse children in oral history. Use the app to record and submit your own projects.

To visit the website, go to https://storycorps.org/.
To download the app, go tohttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/storycorps/id359071069.

Special Event Website Review: Veteran's History Project

In honor of Veteran’s Day, spend some time exploring the Library of Congress Veteran’s History Project.

The VETERAN’S HISTORY PROJECT from the Library of Congress gathers the personal accounts of American war veterans and makes them available online. First-hand accounts from U.S. veterans from World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, and the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts have been posted. From Army medical volunteers to Air Force pilots, a wide range of military positions are represented. Primarily an oral history program, most of the interviews are available in audio- or video-recorded formats along with transcripts. In many cases, memoirs and collections of photographs, letters, diaries, maps, and other primary source documents have been digitized and are included.

Since the project began nearly fifteen years ago, thousands of interviews have been uploaded to the database. Users can search by era, branch of service, gender, media type, and other categories. It’s also possible to search within fields such as location of service and highest rank.

Encourage students to seek out areas of interest such as female nurses of the Vietnam War, African American airmen of the Korean War, or Japanese American soldiers of World War II.

Visit the website at http://www.loc.gov/vets/.