StoryCorps to Expand New Storytelling Mobile App and Online Archive With $600,000 From Knight Foundation

From the Knight Foundation:

StoryCorps, a pioneering online oral history project, will improve its StoryCorps mobile app and build its reach with $600,000 in new support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The app allows people worldwide to record meaningful conversations with one another and participate in creating a global archive of “the wisdom of humanity.”
Since Dave Isay founded StoryCorps in 2003, the organization has provided more than 100,000 Americans with access to a quiet booth and platform to record and share interviews about their lives. The new app puts the StoryCorps experience in the hands of mobile users, enabling anyone, anywhere to record conversations capturing life events, insights and observations. Conversations will be archived at the U.S. Library of Congress and when recorded via the app, also on the StoryCorps.me website.
A 2014 Prototype Fund grant from Knight Foundation enabled StoryCorps to begin developing the app. With the TED Prize awarded to Isay earlier this year, StoryCorps created a public beta version of the app and launched it during Isay’s TED Talk on March 17, 2015.
“Knight Foundation support for the prototype helped us test ideas and move the app to a stage that it was ready to build out. Since its launch in March, more than 200,000 users have downloaded it,” said Isay. “New support will allow StoryCorps to realize the full potential of this powerful tool and to advance our vision to help create a world where we listen closely to each other and recognize the beauty, grace and poetry in the lives and stories we find all around us.”
Knight Foundation support will enable StoryCorps to introduce enhancements, strengthening the future of the app and exploring ways to integrate it into existing StoryCorps programs and services. Technology enhancements may include: support for Skype, improved language features and social network sharing, compatibility with multiple operating systems and better browsing and navigation across platforms. To expand the app’s reach, community engagement programs will be introduced along with ways to use the archived stories to support wider research and study.
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StoryCorps has gathered the largest collection of human voices ever recorded. Isay envisions the app taking StoryCorps from the 100,000 interviews already collected across America, to millions recorded around the world.

Read the Complete Announcement
See Also: StoryCorps expands its efforts to collect the stories of our lives” by Dave Isay (via Knight Foundation Blog)
Watch Online: David Isay’s March 17, 2015 TED Talk: “Everyone around you has a story the world needs to hear”
Direct to StoryCorps Web Site

Filed under: Funding, Interviews, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users