by Lynn McNicol

      BURLINGTON — StoryCorps is a national project to instruct and inspire people to record each others’ stories in sound. The shiny airstream StoryCorps bus, which provides a place for people to record their life stories, will be taking up residence in Burlington, from August 3rd to the 27th.
     A project of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio, StoryCorps started out with stationary StoryBooths in New York City in 2003, and last year launched two MobileBooths, one touring the Western United States, and the other the East. The mobile booths are equipped with recording equipment and space for three people: two participants, normally an interviewer who is usually a friend or relative of the person being interviewed, and a facilitator.
      While the MobileBooth East is parked in Burlington, anyone in the area is invited to participate. StoryCorps provides assistance with interviewing, including a list of suggested questions to ask in the interview.
     The 40-minute format results in a CD that the participants can take home for a suggested donation of $10.
      The project works directly with the local NPR station which will broadcast several of the locally recorded stories. StoryCorps has recorded thousands of stories, many of them already broadcast on NPR, and has garnered wide praise.
     “StoryCorps is history in the richest sense of the word,” Studs Terkel was quoted by the project. “It is a bottom-up history, history that will make people feel like they count. Nobodies become somebodies. In this world today, people feel helpless. They feel like robots. But once they speak of their lives, they realize that they count!”
      All of the recorded stories will also be kept on file at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.

For more information about storyCorps, see www.storycorps.net or contact storyCorps at 646-723-7020.