Broadcastr, a Brooklyn-based mobile start-up, has struck an agreement with National September 11 Memorial and Museum to make 50 oral histories of first-responders available via smart phone and online.
When Broadcastr leaves beta In February, it will welcome the collection of additional cell-recorded oral histories it is hoping users will gather. Interviewers can also geolocate the interview.
Click here to listen to one such oral history, by DetectiveDavidBrink_NYPD_ESU_(excerpt).mp3, NYPD ESU.
Broadcastr, a free app for the iPhone or Android, was designed by school chums and litterateurs Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum as a way to record and share, index and listen to, mapped audio on the go. The goal of this “museum tour of the world,” according to Lindenbaum, is to merge “the oral tradition, the oldest form of story-telling, and marry it with the newest form of distribution.”
Using these capabilities, it is also hoped that visitors to 9-11 locations in New York, D.C. and Pennsylvania will call up oral histories to add texture and understanding to their visits.
Easy access to the oral histories may also benefit policy-makers, historians and journalists.
