Methods of value harvest/gathering vary depending on the storytelling media, the number of people involved, and the goal of the storytelling event.  If the purpose of the event is primarily to create an atmosphere of fun and to foster trust as you work towards creating bonds and bridges within communities, then you will probably want to do very little value harvesting the first time out.  Sometimes it is enough to let the stories be told, to be listened to and discussed.

To harvest values in a one-one one interview, let the storyteller tell you what his/her story means.  Here is a sheet for a teller and a listener to fill out together:

Broad Themes.doc  The result can be discussed and then threaded into a more detailed chart such as the example below with the rays shooting out from the overall theme of "Friendliness."

Wordle, a simple, free online tool will create a word cloud from text, showing dominant themes.  It will not cluster related words, however, and so while it is arresting visually, and a superb first-level tool, it will not burrow down deeply into the values or provide comparison or show subtle relationships between values.

 Examples:

From Damariscotta's Community Conversations, a Story Circles Event:

After people shared stories in their small circles, they jotted down the themes and valuesthey heard in the stories, discussed them and then all groups fed their words into Wordle--

Victor, Idaho's Draft Workplan Pulled Into Wordle:

In story circles, story listeners can be asked to jot down the values they heard in the stories shared around the circle.  Patterns, related values and "hot topics" can emerge:

Teasing out the Detail--Moving Beyond the General Naming of a Value

Initially groups might well identify overarching themes, such as in the above example:  Friendliness was the value picked by the group.  Placed within the circle, the group was invited to create radiating, branching arms to add details, to discover subthemes, and to see how this value might relate to or conflict with other values.  Arranging and clustering these drawings, seeing where the arms touch one another, value to value, can lead to important revelations about differences and common ground, or topics for meetings using other  Heart & Soul approaches including data, polling, discovery, CommunityViz, etc.