University Archives recently completed work on a grant-funded project to provide enhanced access to many of our oral history interviews with African American students who attended Woman’s College/UNCG in the 1960s. These oral history interviews, which are part of SCUA’s African American Institutional Memory Project, were previously available online only as a PDF transcription. Even with this somewhat limited access, the interviews were frequently used by undergraduate students and others seeking to gain information on the personal experiences of students during this time.

This project, which was supported by the University Libraries’ Innovation and Enrichment Grant Program, allowed us to augment access to a total of 27 of our oral history interviews — two more than the initially-proposed 25. Using the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), developed by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries, we indexed the interviews and created time syncs that make it easier to search and move between the written transcription and specific points in the audio recordings. We also established a workflow that will incorporate indexing and syncing via OHMS into the workflow for future University Archives’ oral history projects.

For the first time, direct access to the audio recordings of these valuable interviews is available online. You can browse and listen to these enhanced interviews through the Libraries’ digital collections portal.

Questions about the project may be directed to University Archivist Erin Lawrimore.