Wolf Tales recordings fill in the gaps in NC State’s history

In a family, generations roll over about every 30 years. But within a large university community like NC State, which graduates over 8,000 students each year, generations roll over much more quickly. Historical preservation is as important as it is challenging, in such a rapidly changing place.

Wolf Tales, the mobile video oral history program of the NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), is devoted to preserving the university’s many stories with a special focus on documenting student and alumni voices and other historically underrepresented narratives. And now, it has a new online presence. The NC State community can now more easily access many of the program’s 99 recordings to date, and can look forward to more recordings being made available soon.

Some of those recordings will be made at the Wolf Tales open recording session on Monday, Oct. 30 from 11:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. in the Talley Student Union, Room 2108A. Students, alumni, faculty, staff, and other members of the NC State community are invited to make a recording and add their voices to the historical record of our community. One or two people can sign up in advance for a 15-minute session. Drop-ins are also welcome.

Wolf Tales recordings are beginning to be used for all sorts of purposes across the university, a testament to the quality and relevance of the archive. Student groups are excerpting the recordings in documentary video projects. The Military and Veteran Resource Center leverages their Wolf Tales partnership in their student veterans orientation materials each August. The recordings are showing up in workshops and classes, too. With this in mind, the Libraries prioritized easy access in this site rebuild.

The Libraries’ Brian Dietz (Digital Program Librarian for Special Collections) and Jason Ronallo (Department Head, Digital Library Initiatives) used the new Technician site as a model for the new Wolf Tales site. As recording projects and partnerships continue and thematic collections reach a critical mass, they may be gathered into their own discrete sections on the site.

Access is one priority, and equitable representation is another. Wolf Tales has been expanding along those lines, partially thanks to funding from an NCSU Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity (OIED) 2016-2017 Diversity Mini-Grant, which supported partnerships and recording events to create a more diverse and representative archive of the university.

Over the last year, the Libraries held recording events at the student group EKTAA’s Oak City Revolution South Asian dance competition, the Native American Student Affairs’ NCSU Pow Wow, the GLBT Center’s Lavender Graduation, and the Ebony Harlem Awards of Excellence Celebration presented each by the African American Cultural Center in conjunction with the Department of Multicultural Student Affairs. All of these partners bring perspectives from traditionally underrepresented campus communities. The Wolf Tales program, as part of the overall mission of the SCRC, aims to amplify these voices and to engage them in documenting their own history. And, hopefully, to break exclusionary traditions at NC State.

“Working with the archives of what has been collected in the past at NC State, we see a lot of the gaps where voices have not been documented or remembered,” says Virginia Ferris, Outreach and Engagement Program Librarian, “and it’s a real hindrance to understanding the history of our university and community.”

“Students who were here but don’t see themselves represented in the archival record are being cut short because their stories haven't been fully told. And today’s students are missing the stories of those who were here before them that kind of say ‘We were here, and you belong here.’ This representation is very important.”

Organizational partnerships aren’t the only way for university community members to contribute to the archive. Individuals without a specific group affiliation can come to open recording days like the one on Oct. 30, which are held about twice each semester. Groups can contact the SCRC to plan a recording session or even to integrate one into a group event, such as a reunion, meeting, or celebration.

The Wolf Tales team brings a basic set of questions to recording days, and can tailor these with different community partners to bring out the stories they want to invite and preserve.

“We’re hoping in the future that we’ll be able to build Wolf Tales into major campus events in the semester, Ferris says. “The last day of classes, reunions, or other annual events are a good time to gather people who want to celebrate and reflect on their time here.”