Setting Up a Storybank

A storybank is a mechanism for capturing and sharing stories in a variety of media.

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I have never been a big fan of banks. They charge me crazy fees, tell me I’m overdrawn and create inside me a profound sense of failure. Once upon a time, my dad got in tight with some bankers. Then he got in tight with federal prison. So seriously, I don’t love banks.

But I do love stories. And if you are reading this, I imagine you love them too. Perhaps you also have realized that you are a storyteller. In some sense, we all are, and our stories carry innate value; as Tahir Shah puts it, stories are “the communal currency of humanity.” 

So I guess they do belong in banks.

I’m putting the call out to everyone who has a story: It’s time to put our stories in the bank. A storybank is a mechanism for capturing and sharing stories in a variety of mediums. If we don’t capture our stories and share them, they’ll disappear.

But stories are more than just currency. They are footprints, chronicles of our collective human experience, exchanges, lessons, memories and maps. Think of the tough, breaking news stories we read: [Ferguson. Syria. Child trafficking. Sexual assault in the military. Think of the voices of the world captured in independent documentaries, magazines, photographs, tweets and texts. Think of the stories we share and collect from our communities, tribes, families and co-workers. Stories from the first responders and the last living survivors. Think about all of them. Slowly, and one at a time.

Just think.

These stories are our belongings. They are sacred, and they define our collective imaginary.

“In the digital age, we are creating more stories than ever before. If you are telling stories, collecting stories or sharing stories, it’s time to think about banking them. If you have a viable storybank, your stories gain value each time they are searched, each time they are found and each time they are told.”

Here are some tips for getting started:

• Collaborate within your organization to identify a way to archive your media in a storybank.
• Create a shared taxonomy and use it to tag and organize all content.
• Make the storybank open and accessible to others and searchable by keyword, author, date and place.

Many organizations are already acting as de facto storybanks, like Creative Commons, Getty Images and YouTube. Salesforce has a tool for creating storybanks. Projects like Medium and Cowbird are storybanks too. Families USA has a fantastic, searchable storybank.

We can also take a lesson from the experts at StoryCorps, who maintain a storybank at their offices. The bank is stored on a local server and backed up offsite. Their files are saved in uncompressed formats: WAV for audio, JPG for photos and PDF for scanned documents.

They are also in the process of developing a custom content management system for storing data alongside interview materials. To be effective, stories and the data that backs them up must be kept together. Imagine a place where you can keep not only finished, polished stories, but also the “stuff” the stories were gleaned from—the rough footage, notes, anecdotes and interviews. These are the artifacts that strengthen our stories and bring them to life.

We need a platform where meaningful content can be preserved and exchanged across disciplines. We need a searchable database that includes the original content that was left on the cutting room floor, on the drive, in the ether and on the desktop—from rare documentary film footage to a smartphone video of a story told by a grandmother to her grandson, and all of it in between. We need this bank to model and reinforce the collaborative, creative culture that defines our digital age.

If all storytelling organizations (that’s us) put their minds to creating and investing in a shared storybank, we could build a vibrant, living media archive where our stories could inform and inspire the next generation.

This is what makes us rich. This is our collective cultural currency. This will be a legacy we can be proud to leave behind.