Southern Oral
History Program
and UNC Library Win $505,232 Grant
The Institute for Museum and Library Services has awarded UNC’s
Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) and the UNC Library a $505,232
grant to digitize and publish online 500 oral history interviews
conducted by the SOHP over the past thirty years. This project,
entitled “Oral Histories of the American South,” will
provide access to previously unheard voices and stories that, taken
together, reveal the everyday choices, vibrant characters, and
dramatic events that make up the history of a unique and rapidly
changing region.
“Oral Histories of the American South” will make
tapes and transcripts available to a broader audience than ever
before. It will also develop new technologies for synchronizing
sound and text. For the first time, users will be able to search
large numbers of oral history interviews by theme, access interviews
at the point of their interest, and, with a few clicks of the mouse,
hear the spoken word, read the related transcript text, and learn
from additional historical commentary.
Professor Jacquelyn Hall, Spruill Professor of History, has directed
the SOHP since its founding in 1973. “What excites me most,” she
says, “is that this project will allow us to restore the
power of the human voice to the heart of oral history research
and use. Because it is so much easier to consult transcribed text,
students and scholars often never listen to the tapes at all. Yet
a transcript can’t capture how the story is told—the
tone, the inflection of words, the sound of laughter, the catch
in the voice, the ironies, the personal interaction between interviewer
and interviewee, the silences that sometimes speak louder than
words. Now people will be able to search transcripts with ease
and, at the same time, hear the many nuances of meaning in the
spoken word."
Public service is a major priority of the project. Scholars throughout
the world will be able to consult oral history interviews in their
richest form -- as a simultaneous presentation of sound recordings
and transcripts. K-12 teachers and their students will be able
to use curriculum materials based on personal accounts of historical
events. The general public will
enjoy
free access to materials previously available only to visitors
of the UNC Library. The project will also share the software it
develops with oral history projects everywhere.
“This project will help us to fulfill
the democratic promise of oral history,” says Hall. “Many
scholars have used our interviews and many books have drawn upon
them. Now more and more students, K-12 teachers, radio documentarians,
and history lovers of all kinds will be able to use them as well.”
The three-year project is a collaboration involving the following
groups at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: the
Southern Oral History Program, the Library/DocSouth, the Center
for the Study of the American South (CSAS), the School of Education,
and i-biblio. UNC history professors Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Harry
L. Watson, and Bill Ferris serve as scholarly advisors to the project.
SOHP associate director Joe Mosnier leads the SOHP’s digitization
efforts. Natasha Smith, Digitization Librarian at the UNC Library,
is the Principal Investigator for the new grant-funded initiative.
Todd Cooper guides DocSouth’s oral history technology development
team.
For more information, please contact Dr. Joseph Mosnier, Associate
Director, SOHP, 919-962-5931, mosnier@unc.edu. Websites: Southern
Oral History Program (sohp.org), University Library of the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (lib.unc.edu), and Documenting
the American South digital library (docsouth.unc.edu).
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