Nunn Center Launches Haiti Memory Project
Two years after Haiti was rocked by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake near Port au Prince, I would like to announce the Haiti Memory Project, a project to record and preserve oral histories with over 100 survivors of the earthquake in Haiti.http://www.haitimemoryproject.org
The Haiti Memory Project is the brainchild of Claire Antone Payton, a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and Institute of French Studies at NYU, where she focuses on Haitian history. Beginning in 2011, Payton partnered with our center (the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries), to house, preserve,digitize and make available to the public this important historical collection of narratives. The Haiti Memory Project explores life in the Caribbean country before and after the earthquake. The project’s interviews offer Haitians the opportunity to tell their own story of what has happened to their homeland. While almost all of the interviews reference the earthquake, many of the accounts focus on life after the event, including life in refugee camps. Interviews range from 30 minutes to approximately two hours and reflect such topics as politics, culture, medicine, religion and attitudes toward foreigners. Payton collected the interviews between June and December 2010.
The Nunn Center intends for the oral history project to be accessible to researchers around the world via the Internet and provide Haitians access to this pivotal moment in their history. Our hope is to present these interviews online using the Nunn Center’s OHMS system for search and discovery. To browse the Haiti Memory project collection in SPOKE, the Nunn Center’s online catalog of interview, go to http://www.kentuckyoralhistory.org.
To learn more about this amazing project take a look at a recent news story: http://www.kyforward.com/?p=7748
Oral History Interview about December 8, 1941, the Day After Pearl Harbor
On the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 8, 1941, the Japanese attacked Clark Field in the Philippines. The Nunn Center has an interview in its Colonel Arthur L. Kelly Veterans Oral History Collection with Morgan French about this day. French served as a maintenance crew chief for the 192nd Tank Battalion, Company D. He participated in the delaying action in the Philippines, and describes the Japanese bombing of Clark Field, the subsequent battles, and the fall of Bataan. When the rest of the battalion surrendered, French and his maintenance section escaped to Corregidor. They were eventually captured by the Japanese at Fort Drum and taken to a prison camp in Cabanatuan. There, French was selected to go to Japan on a work detail. He recalls his “hell ship” voyage, prison camps in Tanagawa and Tsuruga, illness among the prisoners, and the prisoners’ work and acts of sabotage. Check out his interview on the Kentuckiana Digital Library, it is quite moving.
Nunn Center Digitizes Documentary on Vietnam Veterans
The Nunn Center has recently digitized a 1985 documentary produced from oral history interviews conducted with Vietnam Veterans in Kentucky. Long Road Back: Vietnam Remembered was based on the Nunn Center’s Vietnam War Oral History Project. The original masters were on older and degrading analog formats and were digitally preserved last month. The Nunn Center is proud to post this powerful documentary online and share important stories of Kentucky’s Vietnam veterans.
Nunn Center Launches SPOKE: Online Oral History Catalog
The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries announces the launch of SPOKE, the Nunn Center’s online oral history catalog. SPOKE can be accessed online at the following link: http://www.kentuckyoralhistory.org
The searchable catalog contains the records for over 8,000 interviews and nearly 300 oral history projects. SPOKE allows users to quickly browse the collections and projects based on subjects or names, or conduct a robust search of the collections, projects, and interviews. Users can follow links from the catalog record to interviews or projects that are available online, or users can request to use interviews that are not yet online by using a convenient online form.
We are excited about providing web access to our rich collection and would welcome any feedback on SPOKE. Again the collection catalog is located at the following link:http://www.kentuckyoralhistory.org
