USC
Shoah Foundation Institute Website Powerfully
Enhanced
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USC
Shoah Foundation Institute logo
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The
USC Shoah
Foundation Institute at the University of
Southern California (USC), an archive of nearly
52,000 videotaped testimonies from Holocaust
survivors and other witnesses, has a newly
redesigned website with user-friendly interactive
exhibits, high resolution video testimony clips,
and lesson plans which can be a great resource for
public libraries, and public library customers.
USC
Shoah Foundation Institute Executive Director
Douglas Greenberg says the Institute’s work,
particularly the new website, supports the efforts
of California’s libraries. Greenberg says,
“Ignorance is bigotry's greatest ally. By
sharing testimony clips of Holocaust survivors and
witnesses online, the USC Shoah Foundation
Institute and California's public libraries can
bring communities together to discuss how to
overcome intolerance and bigotry."
Effective
tools for engaging customers
The
USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s primary online
resources, now in easy-to-use formats, encourage
the public to watch, listen, think, and learn. The
website’s accessible tools support people in
discussing not just the Holocaust, but tolerance;
and teaching tolerance is the mission of the USC
Shoah Foundation Institute.
USC
Shoah Foundation Institute’s Online Testimony
Viewer
[Photo
courtesy USC Shoah Foundation Institute]
Library
staff, educators and other community leaders can
download interactive exhibits
or lesson
plans from the USC Shoah Foundation Institute
website. The testimony clips are arranged by
themes such as hiding, pre-war (normal life),
post-war, camps, and ghettos, or arranged by the
speaker’s experience group such as Jewish
survivors, liberators, and political prisoners,
among others. If libraries want to engage a
targeted customer group, such as teens, the
Institute’s interactive exhibits can be potent
program tools. “Surviving Auschwitz” and
“Children Speak” (survivors who were children
during World War II sharing the timeless struggle
for identity), for example, give users one-on-one
encounters with survivors.
USC
Shoah Foundation Institute beginnings, California
State Library support
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USC
Shoah Foundation Institute Children Speak
online exhibit
[Photo courtesy USC Shoah Foundation
Institute]
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According
to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute website,
in 1994 the Academy Award© winning director
Steven Spielberg, “inspired by his experience
making Schindler’s List,” established
the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History
Foundation to gather video testimonies from
survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust.
Thousands of volunteers with video cameras were
trained to record survivor testimonies in 56
countries and in 32 languages. In 2000, after
recording approximately 50,000 survivors, the
videographers ceased their work and the Foundation
team embarked on the huge task of archiving,
indexing, cataloging, and digitizing the
invaluable tapes.
To
help users access this rich and priceless archive,
in 2000/2001 the California State Library began a
series of 5 annual LSTA grants to USC
for work with the Shoah Foundation. Those
5 grants, which totaled $865,458, supported the
cataloging and digitizing of California Holocaust
survivor testimonies and the eventual delivery of
the collection to schools, libraries and other
centers of learning via high-bandwidth media such
as Internet2.
For
more information about the Shoah Foundation
Institute’s online resources, please contact USC
Shoah Foundation Institute Marketing and
Distribution Specialist Sonya Sharp at sonyas@usc.edu.
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