All Iowa Reads (Iowa Center for the Book/State Library) has received a grant from the Carver Foundation to fund a project manager and transcribers to collect and transcribe up to fifty oral history stories as part of this year's All Iowa Reads. They hope to identify some good candidates for official interviews from stories people are leaving at the special website:www.iowapoliostories.org, but will also accept names and contact information of people you think may have important stories to share, but who cannot contribute through the website. Timing is important because they want to begin work this summer on the oral history project.

What you can do:

1. Promote the website and people sharing their polio stories. This doesn't have to be limited to your discussion of this year's book, Splendid Solution. Make bookmarks (master available on the website) to have available in your library and distribute in your community -- some are taking them to local Rotary Clubs (Rotary has had an international effort to eradicate polio). Promote wherever you have the chance to speak in the next few months. They hope that we can have at least 500 stories by the end of the year, most of them before August 1. There are great stories out there and you are the foot soldiers who need to round them up!

2. Offer to help people uncomfortable with the web environment by accepting a written version of their story and passing it on to Katherine VonWald. Or if you have time, enter their story for them on the website.

3. Pass on names and contact information of people who you know of who may have very compelling stories to Katherine Von Wald.