LibriVox

Like books? They're good aren't they?

You may be aware that after a certain period of time, copyright lapses on books and they become public domain...making them free books. Fantastic. Project Gutenberg has over thirty thousand of em...you can download them to your phone, kindle, PC, Ipad..whatever device you choose and read them for absolutely nothing. That's frankly a resolution in itself...then you can take the BBC Book Challenge and hold your well read head high.

But that's very passive...and you want to get involved...to do something useful...to volunteer...so how about helping LibriVox record all of the current public domain books as free downloadable audio files. Help other people enjoy these wonderful books in a different format. There are loads of books to choose from, you can record as little as one chapter, or commit to recording a whole book over a fair chunk of time. You don't need a studio, you don't need fancy recording equipment...just the basics...a USB mic would be helpful, but not essential if you have a half decent built in mic.

Here's the FAQ

What book would you read?

Your History 2

Here's a big phrase "intangible cultural heritage".
Big in the sense of "wordy", big also in the sense of "really quite important". So what is it?

ICH is tradition, superstition, stories, songs, rituals, festivals...the parts of history and heritage that a community preserves by passing it along to itself. The stuff you cant touch, but that you can hear and experience...in short..all the really cool stuff. So, in our neck of the woods in Inverclyde, ICH would be things like the New Years Day Dip, Comet Festival, Going Galoshans, stories about The Catman and so on - living traditions.

However...tradition needs more of a helping hand than it used to, as communities shift and change and people communicate differently, we pass less and less along in the way we used to...but no one would want us to lose decades and centuries of traditions forever.

Edinburgh Napier University are compiling ICH on a wiki. That sentence may sound a bit weird to you, but have a look at the Intangible Cultural Heritage Project in Scotland to see how you can help keep your communities traditions alive.

Follow them on Facebook here.

And enjoy some classic New Year Intangible Cultural Heritage with this clip of Up Helly Aa...

Your History

Lets assume that you've done the traditional drinking, you've first footed and maybe (like me) you have wassailed your apple tree. Presumably you'll have moved on to making promises to yourself that you can't or won't keep.

Over the next coupe of days, Tales of the Oak will share a few suggestions for resolutions which preserve heritage and storytelling, help the community and also provide a constructive way to footer away a few spare moments of an evening once you've logged off Facebook.

Here's a good one for starters...put the history of your hometown on the map with Historypin...



Easy peasy. Okay...so it's still beta testing...but that just means you're ahead of the curve.

Pop along to Historypin and get involved.