After you record with the StoryCorps App: Tips to ensure your interview is preserved and easy to find

Thank you for recording with the StoryCorps App! You have just contributed to a culture of listening, and if you chose to publish, your interview is now a part of our online archive and preserved in the StoryCorps App collection at the Library of Congress.

Now is the time to ensure your interview is properly preserved, whether you’ve published it to the archive or not, so you can access it forever. Here are our best practices.

• If you chose to publish your interview
• If you chose not to publish your interview

If you chose to publish your interview

• Make sure you published successfully. You should have received an email from StoryCorps after you published your interview with a link to where you can find your interview on the web. It is important to listen to your interview on archive.storycorps.org to ensure it uploaded properly. If your interview is marked as pending, that’s ok. During busy times it can take up to 24 hours for the audio to transcode, so be sure to check back the next day and give it a listen (and if something went wrong, reach out to us right away by submitting a request).

• Choose the privacy setting that is right for you. If you weren’t confident when you made your privacy choices upon publishing, that’s ok. You can always change your privacy settings. Take a look at this article to learn more about your options.

• Use keywords to make your interview easy to find. Keywords, descriptions, and participants are important information that give context to your interview and make it easier to find through a search. If you rushed through publishing you can always go back. Read our suggestions for creating great keywords and descriptions.

• Share your interview with friends and family. StoryCorps interviews often become treasured memories for friends and family, so be sure to share your interview with your community.

• Consider joining a community! Communities are a new feature of archive.storycorps.org and a great way to find and share stories about topics you care about. Once you’ve joined a community, you can select which interviews you’d like to share with that community. Explore the communities in the archive.

If you chose not to publish your interview

• Listen! No technology is perfect. Give your interview a listen to ensure the audio recorded properly and the sound quality is good. If something went wrong, you’ll want to know now, not when you return to the interview in a year.

• Don’t delete the app. When you remove the StoryCorps App from your mobile device, associated files will also be removed. That means the audio file of your interview will be deleted! This cannot be undone. If you must delete the app, make sure to export your audio file first.

• Make sure you have a backup. Since you chose not to publish, the only copy of your interview is on your mobile device. If this device is lost, stolen, or damaged, StoryCorps cannot assist you in retrieving your audio. Now is the time to make sure you have a backup of the audio file! Follow our instructions to export your interview and keep a backup on your computer.

• Still fill out your information. Keywords, descriptions, participants, and titles still matter. Your interview is a memory, and as long as you keep the StoryCorps App on your device, these details are a great way to help you remember the details of your interviews, even if you decide not to publish to the archive.

• Share your interview. If you don’t publish, your sharing options are limited, but you can still send your audio file to friends and family!

• Remember, you can always publish later. You can always change your mind—if you return to the app, you will still have the option to publish. Even if you remove the app from your device, if you have a backup of your audio file, you can upload it to archive.storycorps.org directly if you decide to publish later.