Record your own NC State stories!

Wolf Tales—the Libraries’ story-collecting program to document NC State’s history in the voices of those creating it—is going virtual.

The project, run by the Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center, collects the stories of the NC State community, past and present in the form of video narratives and interviews. Now the Libraries is launching a new, Virtual Wolf Tales platform that allows you to record your own story on a personal device and submit it online. 

Add your voice to the historical record of NC State by making a 10-minute audio or video recording from anywhere! Details are available on the Wolf Tales site here.

“The ‘record your own’ option is a new method for Wolf Tales to expand its reach, to enable all members of the NC State community to participate and share their stories, whether they are just across campus or across the globe,” says Virginia Ferris, Interim Lead Librarian for Outreach, Engagement, & Curation. “It also creates a different channel for people to share their stories that requires less mediation from a third party. Some folks may be more willing to share their stories in the privacy of their own home or office, without the mediation of a video recording setup and Libraries staff present.”

To this point, the Libraries has brought Wolf Tales recording stations to many campus events and hosted “open days” in the Libraries where participants are invited to sit down individually or in groups of 2-3 people to record conversations and reminiscences about the university’s past and present. The rich archive of these recordings preserves memories of the events, people, and places that shaped community members’ time at NC State.

The Wolf Tales archive of recordings is publicly available on the Libraries website here.

“Wolf Tales is a space for folks to share their stories, and to make sure they are remembered and preserved as part of the official university historical record,” says Ferris. “This is especially intended as a way to invite more diverse and inclusive stories from historically marginalized communities on campus, where there may be little to no documentation of individual experiences and contributions to the university from what we find in the institutional records.”