Moving beyond Words: Creating a Multimedia Book on the Harlem Renaissance

Traditionally historians are trained to do research and then present the results of this research in scholar publications—thoroughly documented books, generally from academic presses, and peer reviewed articles in professional journals. This is how we build our reputation in our profession, and advance in our academic institutions. Several years ago I was approached by a commercial publisher and asked to take on a very different type of project. It would be a book, but one targeting a general audience ; more significantly, it would contain a multimedia component—a CD with about eighty minutes of recorded sound, preferably taken from historical recordings. I agreed to take on the project, but with some trepidation. A book for a general audience did not seem so far removed from a book from an academic audience, but I knew nothing about finding historical recordings (other than old phonograph records) or how to integrate sound into a publication. Most disconcerting was the process of actually locating recorded materials. This paper will examine the process of researching, writing, and producing a multimedia book. It will explore the issues involved in tracking down recorded sound, getting access to these materials, extracting sound material, and editing it for inclusion in the book. It will also look at the process of linking sound to text in a manner that both is appropriate to the content of the product and attractive to the reader/listener. It will also consider the use of this type of book in teaching history, both in the classroom and in public presentations. Finally it will address briefly the impact of this project on the way that I, as a historian, look at my research and my teaching.