The Deerfield Public Library is proud to present recorded tours of the Deerfield Historical Cemetery! Right now you can take a tour through Deerfield’s history via the residents buried in the cemetery, and on Veterans Day we’ll be adding a special military history tour, highlighting the veterans buried here and the wars they served in.
Creating the audio tours was a fun and engaging learning experience. I’d never spent a lot of time being recorded, and just figuring out the right pitch to use was quite interesting. Dylan, one of our associates and the person responsible for our excellent eTutor videos, did a fantastic job recording both Multimedia Librarian Ted and I over the course of a couple of weeks. He then edited our stories into a coherent whole.
Recording audio takes a lot of work, patience, and re-recordings…and we have the blooper reel to prove it! Click play below for some exclusive behind-the-scenes audio outtakes!
We wanted our tours to be self-guided, but we didn’t want to force people to carry a map with them while they were out walking, so we had to come up with directions from each grave marker to the next one. Again, Dylan was instrumental. He and I took multiple trips to the cemetery. I would walk to the next grave marker on the list and Dylan would stare from one to the other and eventually come up with directions that made sense. After we came up with all the directions, we enlisted a few people from the Library to walk around and see if they made sense to someone who had spent no time in the cemetery. After we received those edits, Dylan changed up some of the directions (which involved more trips to the cemetery) and figured out the final bits and pieces.
We hope the final product is something people in Deerfield will enjoy for a good long while. It took us a few months to get everything put together, but we truly had a blast recording, setting up instructions, and creating a tour that we think will be both interesting and enlightening for all those who take it.
Want to experience our tours for yourself? You can always go to our Cemetery Tours page for the audio and tour routes! In addition to the regular audio tour already on our website, as part of the Village of Deerfield Veterans Day celebrations, we’ll also be sponsoring a special cemetery tour focused on the veterans buried in the Deerfield Historical Cemetery. Staff will be present from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. to help out with the audio tour, and there will be an in-person guided tour at 2:30 p.m. Click here to learn more. This event is co-sponsored by American Legion Post 738 and the Deerfield Area Historical Society.
