Brian, hi. We've been doing a small oral history project at our museum (the Hatfield Historical Museum in Hatfield, MA) since 2010. We have a handful of excerpts from those interviews posted on our website (hosted for free on Soundcloud). You can check them out here:

http://hatfieldhistory.weebly.com/audio-stories.html

We have a lot more clips, but haven't gotten them edited and posted yet. We also have some of those excerpts saved to QR codes and posted next to accompanying artifacts in our museum. And we have a small tablet patrons can use at the museum to access the audio stories from either the website or the QR code if they don't have a smart device themselves (lots of our patrons don't).

I have a business producing audio memoirs, so it was a no-brainer to go for some local cultural council grants to start doing oral histories of seniors in our town. If you have someone local with some experience to help you get started, that would be ideal -- whether on a volunteer basis or they work with you to write a grant and help get a project set up. There are lots of resources to help you get started -- have you checked out Storycorps' website yet? I also wrote a blog for a few years about doing oral histories with some tips on both equipment and technique. Here's one post about a digital recorder I recommend if you want something small but good. Great audio, easy to use and reasonably priced. The Tascam DR-05, now running $70 to $80 online at some places. You can find the blog post here:

https://wordspicturesstories.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/recorder-recommendation-redux/

We got our town's Historical Commission to fund two of the digital recorders for the museum, plus mini-tripods, as well as the museum tablet. So far, we have used the recorders to record townspeople's memories at a community event about a beloved school that's maybe coming down, and two of our museum volunteers interviewed a World War II vet living in our town to accompany our new WWII exhibit. The plan is to edit the interviews with Audacity, a free audio editor.

If you have lots of money and bigger plans, then these suggestions may not be what you're looking for, but it would be a good, low-key and low-cost way to start. Whatever you do, don't scrimp on sound. If the stories you are going after are worth saving and hearing, you want the audio quality to be good!

Good luck and sorry to be so long-winded.

best,

--Kathie