StoryCorps is coming to Central Pennsylvania -- Bellefonte, to be exact.
From Thursday to Sept. 4, a StoryCorps vehicle will be in Bellefonte to record the stories of pre-scheduled participants. The nonprofit organization will collect the stories of Pennsylvanians to be preserved in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and possibly for broadcast on the radio.
The first participants for the local StoryCorps will be family members: Sue Paterno and her granddaughter, Olivia, will kick off the interviews, according to a press release.
"Our mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share and preserve the stories of their lives," senior communications coordinator Sacha Evans said.
StoryCorps has mobile booths that go around the country. The booths are there to record a participant telling a story, and the set-up of the interviews is often one person interviewing a loved one, asking questions about one of the participants' lives.
Participants can schedule a reservation with StoryCorps, Evans said. The interview process takes about an hour. Many people come in pairs, but if someone comes alone, a facilitator will guide the recording, she said.
People can use the interviews to learn about their loved ones, Evans said. Participants receive a CD of their interview to keep and the interview is also archived in the Library of Congress. While participants can opt to not have their story archived, about 99 percent choose to, Evans said. She said the archive has accrued about 30,000 interviews since 2003.
The radio station will run edited versions of some of the local interviews on WPSU-FM, associate WPSU producer for radio Emily Reddy said.
National Public Radio (NPR) also airs a small portion of the StoryCorps interviews on the Friday "Morning Edition" show, Evans said.
About six of the Central Pennsylvania interviews will end up airing nationally, said Greg Petersen, WPSU-FM station manager. He said he hopes to get as many local interviews to air on WPSU-FM as possible.
StoryCorps decides what it wants to air for national as well as local radio, Peterson said.
But even the interviews that air on the radio do not air in their entirety -- only "gems," or certain clips from the interview, are taken for radio, Petersen said.
Petersen said public radio is a great venue for StoryCorps because "telling stories is what it's all about."
"The shared experience is sometimes closer than you think," Petersen said.
Often, it is family members or other loved ones conducting the interviews to one another, Petersen said. He thinks conversations between generations are very "poignant," because it puts elders and mentors in a different light, he said.
Petersen mentioned some past interviews including a child with Asperger's Syndrome and his mother and a man who proposed during an interview with his girlfriend.
Evans said people like to talk about the big moments in their lives, like the birth of a child, wedding or a traumatic event.
"[We] are trying to tell the story of America," she said.
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