History Burgoo

Lunch conversation reveals unexpected oral history connection!

As a new staff member working with the oral history collections here at KHS, I recently got to experience an exciting coincidence that encapsulated Kentucky’s long-held commitment to documenting and preserving the stories of our commonwealth.

KHS director Kent Whitworth invited new staff and interns to join the executive board for their January board meeting lunch.  We were encouraged to mingle, and always being up for meeting new people, I sat down next to a friendly looking mustachioed man.  I introduced myself and asked his name and he told me he was Mike Mullins, executive director of the Hindman Settlement School.  Being a city girl (I live in Louisville) I only recently learned a bit about Hindman and asked Mr. Mullins if he knew James Still.  “Yeah, I knew him.  We had Thanksgiving dinner together every year for the last 32 years before he died.”   As we discussed his work at the historic settlement school one of the new interns, Jamie Holt, approached our table and asked if we minded if he sat down.  I had met Jamie a few days previously in the digital lab where we convert cassette tape recordings to digital files and I introduced the two.  As they chatted, they soon discovered they had something in common—oral history.

Jamie is finishing his degree from Alice Lloyd College with a semester-long Association of Independent Kentucky Colleges and Universities (AIKCU) internship with the Special Collections and Library team. Part of his work involves digitizing and uploading oral history interviews to the KHS digital collections website, as well as creating catalog records for some of our 9,000 interviews.   This task complements Jamie’s efforts in the library at Alice Lloyd where he and former AIKCU/KHS intern (and fellow Alice Lloyd student) Justin Maynard are working on the initial effort to digitize the nearly three thousand oral histories collected during the Appalachian Oral History Project (AOHP).  Founded in 1970, the AOHP ranks as the earliest large-scale oral history project conducted in Kentucky.  Sarah Milligan, administrator of the Kentucky Oral History Commission at KHS, has been advising Alice Lloyd on the digitization process and now supervises Jamie’s work with oral history during his time at KHS.   

Well, it turns out that prior to working as executive director at Hindman, Mr. Mullins taught classes at Alice Lloyd College and when Mr. Mullins heard about Jamie’s work on the AOHP he shared that he had actually recorded some of the original interviews and also directed his students in conducting interviews as part of their curriculum.  He told us about his favorite interviews from the project, those of Verna Mae Slone, quilter and doll maker among other things or as Mr. Mullins called her “Grandma Moses of the Mountains.”  Ms. Slone condensed her interviews into a book about her life in Appalachia called What I Want to Tell, a memoir she wrote for her family members, the first of six books she would write.  Mullins recounted the progression that Ms. Slone’s book took from hand-typed personal memories stapled together and passed out at family gatherings, to published work, and how proud he was when he opened up the newspaper on the beach one morning on vacation and saw Ms. Slone’s picture looking back at him.

As the desserts arrived, Mr. Mullins expressed appreciation to Jamie for the work he has done to preserve these invaluable histories of Kentucky’s heritage and I realized I was witnessing the progress of the oral history tradition in our commonwealth.  Mr. Mullins worked in the pioneering days to establish the value of oral history documentation and Jamie works today to help preserve and present these histories in the digital age.  I’m happy that digital technology has allowed me to capture and present this  auspicious meeting to you.

--Heather Fox, project archivist for Pass the Word: The Guide to Oral History in Kentucky

Winter Season Week 1

The Special Collections and Library team started off the Winter Season with a party for the Governor, complete with cookies and punch.  Well, really, the Governor was having the Inauguration reception here at the Thomas D. Clark Center for History and the SC&L staff watched from the windows above Commonwealth Hall.  We did not have too many researchers on Tuesday, mostly lots of folks taking the opportunity to look around.  They got to see the SC&L team hard at work cataloging manuscripts.

So what did we accomplish in our first week?  Well let me tell you!  We cataloged 183 small manuscript collections, 20 large manuscript collections and 17 oversize collections.  One of my favorite discoveries was a trio of hotel registers from around central Kentucky covering the time period of the Goebel assassination. Apparently, the investigators collected these registers in the hopes that they would show the activities of the assassins.  On a side note, how many people remember actually signing into a hotel register?

Another highlight was SC 574 the George Delph account ledger, which has marginally interesting account information on a dry goods enterprise in Nicholas County.  It was later used, however, as a scrapbook by an unknown collector who decorated its pages with cut out images of fashion plates, political cartoons and product labels.  You can look forward to digital images appearing in the Digital Collection soon.

We also got together late Friday afternoon with our colleagues at the Kentucky Department of LIbrary and Archives to show them what we would be doing this Winter Season.  Since they will be answering lots of questions about our activities, we thought we would invite them in for a tour.

Not to be outdone, our Oral History staff met with 10 young women as part of the Staging Voices program with the Kentucky Commission on Women.  These high school students are learning how to create a theater piece using oral history as the raw material for their inspiration.  They will be doing 6 or 7 interviews with women who have served as advocates for women or who have effected change in the lives of other women. The students came in on Saturday to learn how to use the equipment and to do a practice interview with Sheila Mason Burton, who inarguably has done much for women in Kentucky.

Well, it is time to get to work.  Stay tuned for our next update on Tuesday December 27!  Merry Christmas everyone!

Exploring the KJHS Archives (conclusion)

While exploring the KJHS archives I have come across every sort of document, photograph, and artifact but there is one last untapped resource I had yet to explore: oral history.

During the last few weeks of my internship, I had the pleasure of interviewing a past KJHS member, Sarah “Suzie” (Orrahood) Hall who, in 1971, was the second female president of KYHA (Kentucky Young Historians Association - it wasn’t known as the Kentucky Junior Historical Society until 1976). Sarah was very active during high school in her Owensboro KYHA chapter, organizing projects to clean up local cemeteries and entering projects into the essay contest at the state convention.

Campaigning for state office was always one of Sarah’s favorite activities in KYHA. She campaigned very hard in high school to be elected state historian, then state secretary, until finally she became state president in 1971 in the twelfth grade.  Sarah’s campaign slogan was “A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.” Becoming president was one of Sarah’s fondest memories, and one of her greatest achievements.

After leaving KYHA, Sarah continued to be active in the organization by mentoring women that also wanted to become state president. Sarah continued her interest in the past by majoring in history at Western Kentucky University and eventually practicing law. Sarah said that she became a lawyer because the campaigning in KYHA inspired her to pursue that profession. In the 90’s Sarah would return to the Kentucky Historical Society to provide legal council.

I asked Sarah why she thought it is important for today’s students to participate in KJHS. Her answer helped to put me to put history into a better perspective. “History is cyclical,” and “only with an understanding of global events in history can children understand what is going on in the nation.” Sarah is a substitute history teacher in Lexington and she is worried that current students might not be able to connect the past events of history with the present.

Sarah is currently organizing a walking tour of an African-American cemetery in Lexington and an outreach program for young African-American school children to visit historic sites. Programs such as this give children a chance to view history in their community.

Interviews help to prove that history isn’t simply just an event—it’s an ongoing process involving the entire community. While interviewing Sarah I remembered a book I read in graduate school called Presence of the Past by Roy Rosenweig. In the book, Rosenweig explains that there are two types of history; History (national and global events that effect us all, that are recorded) and history (events that shape all of our lives, though on a much more local or mundane aspect of life, that aren’t necessarily recorded). For me the connection came when I realized that everything we do is history. The events, documents and organizations that we create as a society may not make the history books, but they are just as important because they shape the lives of future generations of people in our community. Organizations such as KJHS and the Kentucky Historical Society, though created years ago, still continue to influence members of the community through their actions.  

In the case with Sarah Hall, her passion for history still influences the community today. It is this passion that will continue to serve the community, and also inspire other children to pursue their interest in history.

--Derrick Ranostaj

 

Images:

1.) KYHS chapter outside building in Hodgenville, ca. 1963.

2.) 1974 Harrodsburg High School Yearbook of KYHS chapter.

Oral History Based Radio Series on Displaced LBL Region

KHS Collection. 1987ph08.77. J.B. Bruce homestead, Eddyville, Ky. Described as: "This old log house is one of the few dwellings entirely within the 55, 000 acre forest preserve of Hillman Land in the 'In Between the Rivers' section of Lyon County." circa 1920. 

I recently heard from author, journalist and oral historian, Constance Alexander (also a member of the Kentucky Oral History Commission, might I add) about the rebroadcast of a radio program based on a western Kentucky oral history series from the late 1990s.

If you are interested to see

a) how oral history can be turned into a meaningful and interesting media broadcast,

b) unique culture and history from the Land Between the Lakes Region of the state or

c) a good way to spend a few hours over the upcoming work week,

then this is something you are going to want to check out.

The original series Connecting People & Place, aired on Murray’s public radio station WKMS-FM, is a documentary radio project celebrating the rich cultural heritage of Between the Rivers in west Kentucky and Tennessee.

Each hour of the rebroadcast combines two of the half-hour segments originally developed by Alexander in 1997-98 as a cooperative project between WKMS and Land Between The Lakes Association with funding from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Oral History Commission. As a part of this oral history project, Alexander conducted more than 60 interviews focusing on the displacement of people who formerly lived in the Between the Rivers region. Between the Rivers is an area of land comprised of roughly 170,000 acres located in parts of Lyon and Trigg Counties of western KY and Stewart County of TN. In 1963, President Kennedy created Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area, eventually displacing hundreds of families living in the Between the regions area. The interviews cover family, community, historical personal narratives along with regional folklore of a place that only exist in the shared memory of a dislocated physical community.

I recommend listening to some of the radio pieces and seeing if the stories being broadcast ring familiar with your own family and community history? If so, maybe it is time to document your own stories – oral history is an easy way to get that started. (Find out how)

The re-broadcast kicks off a celebration of our region’s history in conjunction with Journey Stories, a traveling exhibition form the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street program. With support from the Kentucky Humanities Council, Journey Stories will be on view at Murray State University’s Wrather Museum from January 28 to March 10, 2012. WKMS is seeking personal journey stories from its listeners to broadcast while the exhibition is on view. (CONSIDER PARTICIPTING!) Contact msu.wkms@murraystate.edu by the end of October to participate and receive a keepsake recording as well.

Does anyone have their own memory of this region of the state? Feel free to share comments.

 

--sarah milligan

 

 

Discovering Kentucky's Own "Mad Man"

If there are two things in this world that I love most, it would have to be history and pop culture. Seriously, ask any of my former students about how I “ruined” all of their favorite history-based films in class because I kept pointing out all the historical inaccuracies or kept stopping the movie to talk about the parallels with the film and the influences it was taking from history. I am constantly finding television shows and movies taking their influences from history, and why not? History is chock-full of great stories to tell or set in eras that are drastically different from our current way of life.

Take AMC channel’s hit show Mad Men, the drama set in the 1960’s about the cut-throat industry of advertising. It takes its own particular influence from that era in regards to the exuberant lifestyles some of these men lived, the dating of famous beautiful women and (of course making cigarettes cool again). Unless people actually lived in those times (and I wish I had because the 1960s were just rife with all kinds of cultural mega-hits, from the music, the political movements, and the social movements), you wouldn’t think that a show like Mad Men was really that historically sound… that is until I came across one of Kentucky’s very own “mad men” to make me reconsider.

Ask any person born after 1985 who John Y. Brown, Jr. was and they would probably stare at you blankly. Ask that same person to name what multi-million dollar restaurant chain was founded in Kentucky and they will immediately exclaim “Kentucky Fried Chicken!” Chances are that this person (unless they are extremely well-versed in Kentucky political history) will not know that these two are linked. I myself admit that I had not known who John Y. Brown, Jr. was or his contributions to the one of the most recognizable Kentucky institutions or to the state (yes I was born in 1985).

When I was assigned to audit our collections for Kentucky governors and provide item descriptions for the oral histories contained in them, this was going to mean reading transcripts of the interviews. At first thought “ugh!” came to mind. However, this all changed with the John Y. Brown collection. The transcripts of this man’s life read almost like a story arc for the Mad Men show. This man vas a virtual rock star of the business world before shocking everyone in Kentucky politics by throwing his hat into the gubernatorial race in 1979. Let’s go down the list of Brown’s “Mad Men” credentials:

 • Become a criminal lawyer and be involved in ten murder cases… check.

• Married to a former Miss America (Phyllis George)…check.

• Part owner of sports teams ,including the Boston Celtics and the Kentucky Colonels (an American Basketball Association team that existed in the commonwealth before the 1976 merger of the ABA with the NBA, which saw the Colonels become collateral damage)… You got it.

• Buying a little known restaurant franchise called Kentucky Fried Chicken for $2 million and turning it into a global , multi-million dollar chain ( and selling it for over $200 million later in life)… yup.

 • Become governor of a state… did it.

* As a side note, just reading Brown’s recollections on the dealings with Col. Sanders and his business team alone warrant an episode of Mad Men.

And this is all leading up to his run as the 51st  governor of Kentucky, which in itself was an interesting administration because of Brown’s business-like running of the government, meaning less influence on the state legislature (a tactic not seen much in Kentucky politics up until that point.)

Discovering these types of characters in a historical context is fascinating because it exemplifies influence of a time gone by that people who are fans of these period shows can relate to. It is easy to say that the stories in the movies and television are better than anything that happens in real-life, but I would be quick to suggest a trip to the historical society and dig up some stories on people of the past. You may find something far more entertaining.

Editorial Note: The John Y. Brown Collection is currently in the digitization process, so be sure to look for it in our Digital Collections in the upcoming days!

-- Tommy Grant

Images: Image 1- Governor John Y. Brown (1979-1983) of Fayette Co., Museum Collection donated by the Ky Department of the Arts, 1988.4.2

Image 2- "Sanders Court & Cafe- Corbin, KY", postcard of the famous Sanders Court & Cafe where Harland Sanders first sold his famous chicken recipe. From the Roland Morgan Kentucky Postcard Collection, Graphic5.Box3.186

I love an active library, and Whitley County is ready to record

 

After traveling the state quite a bit since starting here at KHS in 2005, I was surprised to get a chance to visit someplace new to me, Williamsburg, KY. I had been to Whitley County before, but never before the county seat. It was a an easy drive down I-75 into a very cute downtown, signs all over the place for the farmer’s market and a lot of green every where I went. If you haven’t been there, it is time to go.

Internal monolog aside, I was invited by the Whitley County Public Library  in conjunction with the Whitley County Historical and Genealogical Society to conduct an oral history workshop to get community volunteers ready to assist in an oral history project getting started down there. The library has purchased a professional audio recorder, ready to use for oral history, if you have history with Whitley County then consider giving them a call and signing up (or sign up your neighbor). 

Even with a torrential downpour which started immediately when I made it inside the library, there was still a good turnout of oral historians in training. With all of that enthusiasm, I can see this project going far. We discussed the basics framework of an oral history interview, preparation, conducting the interview and follow-up, as well as using digital recorders, ethics and the importance of release forms.
 This group is ready to get started documenting the history of Whitley County through the voice of its residents. Really, bring your parents, neighbors, dentist in and get them paired with a volunteer oral historian to record that story. It all makes up the individual AND community history of this county and the people. Take history into your own hands and participate!

In addition to that, the snacks were great and the sense-of-humor was even better.
Thanks for the invitation and the participation on such a wet day. I can’t wait to see what you all do.

 - Sarah Milligan

image, top - KHS Collection. 1987PH11.00121. Whitley County Courthouse. 1965.

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

Are you having ham, roast beef or turkey this Easter?

Well, it is that time of year again when the KHS staff find themselves looking at the atomic bunny picture in the Digital Collections and giggling.  This year we decided to look for other amusing images in the "DC" and came across the one below.  It made us wonder what culinary masterpieces will be gracing tables this weekend at homes across the state?

 

Does your family have Easter dinner traditions?  Ham and asparagus?  Fiddlefern salad?  Lamb with mint sauce?

 

And then there is the weather.  Seriously, hail, floods, tornadoes and more, and that was just last night!  Spring is supposed to be changeable but still!  Everyone has a memory of their favorite Easter hat or dress or suit.  As staff gathered at the reference desk today we were sharing memories of Easter outfits. 

 

I remember that my mother always bought my dress to be a size too big, so I could wear long underwear if the temperature was under 30 degrees.  And how about the year the Easter Egg hunt that got cancelled because we could not find ANY Easter candy due to the 6 inches of snow on the ground. 

 

Well, before you know it, it will be summer and we will be complaining about the heat and the drought.   In the meantime, family gatherings provide the perfect opportunity to get the family to tell stories about their favorite holiday memories and traditions. 

 --Louise Jones

Images:

Fred Trosch, butcher in the Willard Rouse Jillson Photo Collection, 1987PH08

Family gathering at dinner time, Frankfort, Ky. From the Community Memories: A Glimpse of African American Life in Frankfort, Ky., 1995PH02, contributed by Clara E. Hogan.

Children in Easter outfits. From the Ohio River Portrait Project, 1990PH02, contributed by John Strattan.

Easter Egg hunt for children and faculty at Paducah Community College., date ca. 1970.  From the Ohio River Portrait Project, 1990PH02, contributed by John E.L. Robertson.