Sometimes you meet people whom you just want to sit down with and have a tape recorder running. Maybe it's a grandfather who tells really amazing stories, or a neighbor who spent his life working in the steel mills, or the waitress at the neighborhood coffee shop.

The chance to preserve some of those great stories is here. Starting today, the StoryCorps project will set up shop in Oakland. This ongoing oral history project is compiling and preserving a large archive of American voices. Starting today, people in the Pittsburgh area will be adding to that chorus.

StoryCorps' goal is to foster the art of oral history storytelling -- to inspire people to tell their stories and to get others to record the stories of people they think are interesting.

The project is a collaborative effort among Sound Portraits Productions, the Library of Congress and public radio stations across the country. WDUQ-FM (90.5), in partnership with Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, is bringing StoryCorps here.

Last year, two StoryCorps MobileBooth recording studios began touring the country. One of them will be parked outside of the Carnegie Library Main Branch in Oakland. There are also two permanent recording studios in New York.

Interviews will be recorded here through July 2. They'll be conducted in pairs -- the subject and the interviewer, who is often a family member or friend. Around half of the slots are already filled. People who would like to take part can get information through WDUQ's Web site (www.wduq.org), which has a link to the reservations section.

Among local people scheduled to be recorded are 86-year-old Herbert Edwards, a survivor of the Donora Smog of 1948, who'll be interviewed by Julie Throckmorton, who met him through her work with the Rivers of Steel oral history project; and Mark Clayton Southers, playwright and artistic director of the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company -- and also a steelworker -- and his daughter Ashley.

The recorded interviews will go to the StoryCorps Archive, which is housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Excerpts from some interviews will air on NPR's "Morning Edition" in the coming months. WDUQ will air some longer segments of the Pittsburgh interviews, focusing on stories that have more local than national interest.

Listeners can also hear some of the stories collected in other parts of the country online at the StoryCorps Web site (www.storycorps.net).