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On Saturday, June 15, the Keene Valley Library welcomed 35 members of the public to celebrate the launch of myadirondackstory.org, a website for the multi-year history project Adirondack Community: Capturing, Retaining, and Communicating the Stories of Who We Are.
Anyone with an internet connection can access the project’s collection of audio stories and related photographs. To date, the website hosts 34 accounts told by Keene residents about the rich social and cultural history of their community in New York State’s Adirondack Mountains.
Keene Valley Library Association Director Karen Glass welcomed attendees in the Strickler Family Community Room, a new public meeting space completed in 2018 as part of the library’s $1.5 million capital campaign.
A presentation by Grants Manager Jery Huntley described how the project hopes to preserve Keene’s living history for future generations. Adirondack Community plans to collect more than 100 stories by September as the project continues.
Those who wish to contribute to the project may contact myadirondackstory@gmail.com. Stories are now available on myadirondackstory.org.
This program was funded by Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Glenn and Carol Pearsall Adirondack Foundation, the Northern New York Library Network, and community supporters using the Memria.org platform.
Photo of Adirondack Community courtesy Bethany Garretson.
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Archiving stories like this is of great value. It was done similarly in Lower Manhattan after 9/11/2001, and preserves history – much of which would surely have gotten lost, faded into vagueness, or become impossible for seekers to find.
I think we should be grateful for modern technology. The old-fashioned way of having interviewers, transcribers, editors, cross-indexers and publishers (or, even just having endless file cabinets full of documents and transcripts) has become prohibitive. But the work is again feasible in the electronic age. And future Artificial Intelligence software may even facilitate its comprehensiveness, accessibility and analysis in ways we can’t yet imagine.
It looks like only Keene stories are being preserved. It would be good to know if there is anything similar in other Adk towns, or at whatever the Adk Museum in Blue Mountain Lake is called these days. It would be really worthwhile to collect every such story, and I’m certain funding resources for such a big job must exist out there somewhere …
Yes the “Adirondack Experience” name seems to be contentious, having been known otherwise. But it is still one of the great places in the northeast for Adirondack history. Even the most jaded vacationer leaves with knowledge and a special appreciation for six million acres of the world that is so famous and loved.