History Burgoo

What YOU Can Discover at the Kentucky Historical Society

 

When I first got the phone call that I had been accepted as an intern at the Kentucky Historical Society, I was thrilled.  I knew that working at a historical society was something that I had always wanted to experience, starting from my days as a history major at Western Kentucky University. I would spend countless hours in the library stacks and special collections areas (and not because as a history undergrad you spend more time writing papers than an English major did) but because I would get so caught up in the thrill of discovery while conducting research on a given historical topic.

As a high school history teacher, I attempted to instill that same thrill of discovery through research into my students by telling them to use resources other than Google and to open their eyes to a world of knowledge they probably didn’t know existed (I mean lets face it, as a seventeen year old, the only way you are going to become interested about a bunch of dead guys is if they sparkle in the sunlight and have an occasional scuffle with werewolves who never seem to have a shirt on). But there would be that occasional student who would come up to me and say “ I actually really enjoyed going to the local history society and finding out some neat stuff”, my faith in the next generation is still in tact.

When I decided to pursue my master’s degree in Library and Information Science at the University of Kentucky, I knew archiving was the area of concentration that would be a perfect fit for me, given the close relationship that history and archives share.  As an archivist, I would be a steward of historical artifacts that someone, someday, would see and feel that same rush of curiosity that I had felt in the library stacks as an undergrad.  The internship at KHS would offer some much needed hands-on experience in archiving practices and, as I would discover upon my first day at KHS, that there is much more to working in a historical society than I had perceived.  The theme of discovery continues.

On any given day I am working at the historical society, I am learning something new about the state of Kentucky.  If it is a day I am working in the Oral History Collection, I am more than likely auditing and  digitizing tapes of interviews or writing descriptions of collections that haven’t been cataloged yet. The most recent of which is the oral histories of some of our more prolific governors of the 20th century. I  can’t tell you the amount of intrigue one can accumulate while watching an interview with Bert T.  Combs over his battle with educational reform in this state or reading through a transcript of John Y. Brown and his dealings with the famous “Colonel” of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame (a subject that will the focus of my next blog entry).  And these are only a fraction of interesting artifacts to be found. 

Genealogy is a huge interest of patrons who come to the society.  When I am not in the lab digitizing, you can probably find me in the microfilm room, manning the reference desk and helping patrons find all sorts of records about ancestors that inhabited this state, spanning from marriage certificates from the late 1700s or court records of the 19th century.  There are even rare books that patrons can access that date back to the 1800s, a pretty awesome thing to behold if you are a history geek, such as myself. If you are a visual person, KHS has got you covered, with thousands of photogrpahs in our collection of many different topics. A personal favorite of mine are photogrpahs of Kentucky servicemen going off to fight WWII in the 1940's( seen below).  I could go on and on about the vast amount of historical information that can be found at the historical society, but then it wouldn’t be any fun in discovering it for yourself!

 

Interning at the Kentucky Historical Society will no doubt be a tremendous impact on my future professional career.  The things I have learned here will be things I take with me forever, a sentiment I hope that any who read this article will share and come down to KHS and just look around.  You never know what you may discover while you’re here.

- - Tommy Grant

Images:

Top Right- Bert T. Combs, portrait painting ca. 1970, KHS Collection 1975.17

Middle Left- Colonel Harland David Sanders, wikipedia.org

Bottom: James E. Bell in navu uniform. World War II vintage. He served in the South Pacific through most of the war as a pharmacist's mate on several ships ca. 1940s, KHS collection JPW.1990ph2.2JEFW3

Beyond the Boring: Interning at the Kentucky Historical Society

I have always loved history. 

My earliest educational memories involve me getting up early on Saturday mornings to watch School House Rock.  In the first grade I may not have been able to spell Declaration of Independence, but oh, could I recite to you its preamble.  As I grew older, my love for history grew deeper.  In the fourth grade I had to introduce the rest of my class to a county in Kentucky.  I introduced Taylor County with, naturally, a heart-shaped poster. In middle school I felt like an amateur history detective—piecing together bits of evidence to find out who killed King Tut; and in high school I wrote my very first thesis paper on the Harlem Renaissance. (And I got an A!) The summer before my freshman year at UK I was agonizing over whether to pursue a degree in Political Science or History.  I tried to let history go, but thanks to the late Dr. Bowman, a wonderful American history teacher with a love for Antebellum America, I realized just how much I missed history and picked it right back up again.  My other passion involves books, which is why I after graduation I am pursuing a Master’s in Information and Library Science.  What does this have to do with anything?  Nothing, other than to introduce myself to you and to show how you excited I am to be working at the Kentucky Historical Society this summer.

My first day here began with me realizing the doors are closed to the public on Mondays and Tuesdays, due to a gradual decrease of frontline staff over the last 3 years (35% reduction, yikes!) so it pays to have a cell phone number handy.  Check.  Within 15 minutes I go from knocking on an outside window to searching the rare book collection with my boss and things have been that great ever since.  If I had to describe my work experience so far in one word, I would choose overwhelming; not because the workload is impossible, but because the amount of historic information here is incredibly enormous.  One day I am pin-pointing on a Kentucky county map the stops General John Hunt Morgan made in the state during his havoc-causing raids...

...the next I am listening to and summarizing oral interviews made by late Kentucky Governors...

1982OH02--Interview with Governor Wetherby

 

...and the day after that I am looking through a collection of postcards of Kentucky spanning ten-thousand pictures.

 


My favorite aspect of this job is that I learn something new here everyday.  Did you know that during the civil war the term “brothers against brothers” was taken literally in one household in Clark County? The Honorable Samuel and Matilda Hickman Hanson had five sons who served during this war: Two served in blue, three served in gray.  Do you know which Kentucky Governor made the unpopular stand during the Southern Regional Education Board conference supporting the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision?  I could tell you the answer, but what fun would that be for you? Pull out your magnify glass—or reading glasses, whichever you prefer—come visit the library and see for yourself!

 --Kortnie Allen

Images:

Drawing of townspeople preparing for a raid by John Hunt Morgan, ca. 1864. Handwritten caption at botton of image reads "Main Street while Morgan was expected". Laura G. Pugh Photo Album of Conferate Army Officers and Elected Officials, 2000PH05.42.

  "Oldest Brick House in Kentucky, Built in 1782, Crab Orchard, Ky." ca 1910. Black and white photo of the same home as postcard 3.397. This photo includes several people standing in front of the house. Graphic 5 Ronald Morgan Kentucky Postcard Collection, Graphic5.Box3.398.

More about the recent NEH award for Oral History Project - or - What are we going to do with $100K?

I am extremely pleased with all of the press that has picked up our announcement that the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the KHS Foundation $100,000 to develop a new oral history tool, which we are calling, Pass the Word. 

While our release thus far has been pretty basic – we were awarded funding, it will be used over the course of 2 years, we will hire some staff and interns and create a online statewide oral history database – there are obviously a lot more details to share.

So, let me back up a bit and give some background for this project. This is not the first comprehensive look at oral history collections in the state. In 1989 the National Historical Publications and Records Commissions (NHPRC) awarded the Kentucky Oral History Commission (KOHC) a grant to “gather and make available information on the location, size, content and accessibility of oral history interviews at repositories both large and small, public and private.” By 1990, 20,000 interviews were located at repositories throughout the state and in 1991, the published Guide to Kentucky Oral History Collections was available, which described holdings at forty-seven Kentucky repositories, this did not necessarily include public libraries that maintained “access” copies of oral history interviews. The publication contained information on the repository (who, what, when, how), the individual collection (could comprise 1 interview or 100), and the collections were indexed by subject and by interviewee. 
Following the tremendous work (and very progressive, might I add) of compiling this published guide, the KOHC staff knew they needed something more flexible to help researchers find oral history collections for the state – the published guide was stuck at the completion of the survey on December 1, 1990. We turned our original survey content and some updated information into an online database. This time the indexes for subject and interviewee were key word searchable and for 1998, once again, we were very progressive in this venture. The content for this online resource has been periodically (and labor intensively) updated, working primarily with those already identified 47 repositories. As the project staff acknowledged the technological world is now so wide open and an intensive, comprehensive attempt to document collections has not been done in roughly 20 years, we are decided to intentionally devote, time, staff and resources to continue our tradition of oral history access for the state collections through one centralized point. The models previously designed are often still used. 

I, for one, still reach for the 1991 published guide when people call asking about oral history collection topics or individuals – especially if it is not a part of the KOHC collection (housed and maintained in the KHS archives since 1992). We needed a better suited tool for today’s researcher (that term applies to many different breeds – family history, scholarly, educational etc…) to locate what oral histories have been completed in the state and how can they be accessed. 

While this tool, this online portal, is not meant to provide instant gratification in the sense that every oral history interview will now be online and ready to play at the touch of a button – there are greater issues with that demand, some of which are financial, some of which are ethical, - BUT it will provide immediate information about each collection, hopefully each interview in that collection, each repository, if available online, a link to access it AND clear directions on the policy of the repository on how to access collections not available for listening online. It will be the first line of searching for oral history content for the entire state. A goal we share with our previous incarnations of this project. 

Another thing we are adding with this web 2.0 (or are we on 3.0 at this point?) version of an oral history guide, the content will be managed by the individual collection holders, not the KOHC office. While we will maintain, provide assistance and overall monitor the site, the individual repositories can add collections as they are processed for the public, can change their own profile information, add links to more online content as it becomes available, and generally take the reigns for their own representation. We plan on spending the first 2 years of the project – the ones funded by the NEH – to develop the online site, work with repositories for initial content population (including much travel and as much hands-on assistance as we can provide and is needed) and training on utilization. While we won’t disappear after those 2 years, we will hand the primary content responsibility over to the content holders. 

As you can probably tell, our primary goal in this project is to HELP RESEARCHERS LOCATE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS. It has been a long-term goal of the KOHC and will continue to be one. For now, I am anxious to see what collections have been added over the last 20 years. I can tell you a few numbers off the top of my head, the KOHC collection at KHS has roughly 9,000 oral history collections to date – in 1991 we had about 3,700. The Nunn Center for Oral History at UofK currently has about 8,000 interviews in their collection, in 1991, they also had about 3,700 interviews. Just imagine what else is  out there and how it could be utilized if folks know where to go to find it! I seriously get chills.

So, keep checking in, we will be posting updates to the project and would love feedback from folks as we go along. Our first step is to hire a project archivist/coordinator – we are hoping to be able to open this position up for applicants sometime in July – keep checking for this add if you are interested! Also, for the 2 internships we will have during the course of the project, we are looking at one for spring and one for summer in 2012 at the moment, while this might change, they won’t be open until we get a little bit farther into the framework of the project. 

 

- Sarah Milligan

Crowdsourcing: using technology to build community

I just got back from lovely Maysville, Kentucky, where the Kentucky Museum and Heritage Alliance is holding its annual meeting.  This year the theme was "Negotiating the Rapids:  Celebrating our Strength, Service and Stewardship".  Months ago I submitted a program presentation on the topic of crowdsourcing and, amazingly, they selected my topic for the annual meeting.

So you may well ask, just what is this thing you call crowdsourcing?  Wikipedia defines crowdsourcing as the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee, to an undefined large group of people or community, through an open call.  Translated that means telling the world that you are looking for a solution to a problem and waiting for some unknown person to solve that problem, usually for free.  Software developers and programmers have long used this method to fix glitches in programs, like "does anyone know how to..."

This can be really useful but, sometimes you get what you paid for, which is to say, not much.  Now I don't have any immediate programming needs nor am I designing any software, so you might wonder what use museums and archives could have for this technique.  Well, if you tweek the parameters just a bit this process can be transforming.  If you broaden the model to a "creative services exchange" where the institution vets the crowd in advance, and the staff facilitate the exchange between staff and crowd, then this can be a melding of staff and crowd knowledge which benefits everyone in the end.

 We are in the process of using this model with the William C. Ogden Photographic Negatives project.  We, the staff at the Kentucky Historical Society, were responsible for caring for, housing and inventorying this collection of over 10,000 photographic negatives.  However, the original housing for these negatives were glassine envelopes on which the photographer, Bill Ogden, had written sometimes cryptic notations.  

We had the knowledge to do a basic inventory, but we needed more contextual information to truly process the collection and make it accessible and usable.  For example, the envelope for the image below stated "Clay W. Buckner" but the image is of a woman in a wedding dress.  Is this Clay Buckner's daughter?  His bride?  We, at KHS, lacked that information.

 
Enter our partner, the Bluegrass Heritage Museum, with director Sandra Stults and her community of volunteers.  This museum is in Winchester, Kentucky, where Ogden resided for over 60 years.  His photographic studio was well known throughout Clark County and neighboring Bourbon, Fayette, Woodford and Franklin Counties.  Many of Sandy's volunteers knew Ogden or had seen photographic portraits created by him.  And better yet, they knew their community, their neighbors and the stories that provided the context for these photographic negatives.

So Sandy and I met and cooked up a plan to bring these two groups together to share their knowledge and to build on that knowledge.  We both wanted to learn more about the collection and to make it useful to researchers and community members alike.  KHS wanted to inventory the collection and to digitize the images.  Bluegrass Heritage Museum wanted to make the collection, or a portion of it, available locally in Winchester through an exhibit.  And so this is the way we used crowdsourcing to inventory, describe, digitize and exhibit this wonderful collection.  

First, we got the older community members to come to KHS to view the collection, and to work with staff to better describe the images.

Then, working with students from George Rogers Clark High School in Winchester, KY, Sandy and her volunteers selected the images they wanted to research, scan and exhibit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then they researched.

And they scanned.

And they described the results of their research and added this to the digital collection.

And we have the beginnings of a finished product.  Just the beginnings, mind you, as there are 28 images up online and 10,000+ in the collection.

And we also have a group that can't wait to come back and do more research, scanning and description.  And now that images are up online and on exhibit at the Bluegrass Heritage Museum in Winchester, we hope that others with knowledge about this photographer and his subjects will also share that information with us.  

A true exchange.  Two organizations working together to make these historic images available to their communities.  Ahh, this is what we are talking about when we say "crowdsourcing".

For further information about the Bluegrass Heritage Museum, visit their website at www.bgheritage.com.

To view selections online, please go to our Digital Collection at www.kyhistory.com.

If you have information that can help us further identify the subjects of these images, please contact us at Refdesk@ky.gov.  Please remember to identify the image by its accession number, so we can add your infomation to the correct image.

-- Louise Jones