The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraris was well represented last week at the Oral History Association’s annual meeting in Denver, Colorado. The conference theme was “Memories of Conflict and Disaster: Oral History and the Politics of Truth, Trauma, and Reconciliation.” Doug Boyd served as the Keynote speaker on Friday speaking about his role in the IMLS funded project Oral History in the Digital Age which is an effort to establish best practices for digital oral history, particularly with regard to the video, access and archival preservation. He also highlighted the recent work of the Nunn Center in the keynote.
Doug and Sara Price taught a pre-conference workshop for 40 participants about digital preservation of oral history and they both served on the panel From Combat to Kentucky: Student Veteran Oral History Project. Sara Price also chaired the panel Community, Conquest, and Childlessness: The Role of Oral History in Gambia’s Past and Present and served on the conference program committee as well. Click here to see the conference program.
A conference highlight was the Nunn Center’s documentary Quest for the Perfect Bourbon: Voices of Buffalo Trace Distillery, directed by filmmaker and oral historian Joanna Hay, won honorable mention for the association’s non-print award. The documentary, which you can view online, was based on the Nunn Center’s Buffalo Trace Distillery Oral History Project. On Wednesday night, the film was shown in its entirety followed by a bourbon tasting hosted by the Buffalo Trace Distillery.
Overall, it was an excellent week for the Nunn Center at the Oral History Association’s annual meeting and we are already preparing for Cleveland’s meeting in 2012.