Oral History Projects
Current Projects
- SPOHP is embarking on a collaborative research project with The Sunflower County Civil Rights Organization in Indianola, Mississippi, to document the Civil Rights Movement in the Mississippi Delta September 11-14, 2008. A team of undergraduates from UF and FSU will conduct oral histories at the Mississippi Freedom Summer Reunion in Indianola. The Reunion focuses on the experiences of the Civil Rights Movement veterans in the Mississippi Delta before, during and after the famous Mississippi for Freedom Summer in 1964.
- SPOHP is starting a new oral history project on Labor, Work and Social Justice in the Gulf South. This wide-ranging project builds on an original research interest pioneered by Samuel Proctor at UF. We will begin by conducting oral histories with first-generation immigrants, labor union members, retiring professors, women in professional health occupations, as well as service workers at the University of Florida.
- SPOHP is launching an Oral History Public Program Series in cooperation with the UF Department of History, The Matheson Museum, Inc. and UF Special Collections Library. In 2008 and 2009 these exhibits and programs will focus on: World War II veterans' experiences, African American History, women in the professional health occupations and Everglades history. Stay tuned for further information!
- Roberta Peacock and Sarah Eiland are working with the Lake City Historical Society to develop an oral history project on the history of the downtown area, veterans and Lake City itself.
- Roberta Peacock is working with the Ocala Storytellers, the Marion County School Board and the Ocala-Marion Public Library to develop an oral history project of Ocala-Marion County.
- Roberta Peacock, Ann Smith and Deborah Hendrix have been meeting with several persons from the UF College of Nursing to develop an oral history project with the first volunteers of the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. This would be an exciting and valuable collection of videotaped interviews to add to our archives.
- We have completed a contract with the Middle District Courts of Florida to compile a video collection. Dr. Pleasants has completed 12 videotaped oral history interviews with judges from the Middle District Courts of Florida and these videos have become part of the SPOHP archives.
- A generous grant from Caleb and Michelle Grimes allowed SPOHP to begin its Digitization Project. We continue working with the Digital Library to download the remainder of our interviews.
- We have been working with the Andersonville National Prison Site to process their POW interviews. After completing the first set of interview transcriptions, we are awaiting approval of a second contract for this project. The National Park Service employees at Andersonville have conducted over 900 interviews with POWs from many wars (World War I to present). This is a very valuable and interesting collection. Roberta Peacock is working with officials at Andersonville to continue with this project.
- Dan Simone and Roberta Peacock have begun work on a new project with the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD,) conducting oral history interviews with ranching families in the greater Orlando area.
Ongoing Projects
- We are continuing work on oral histories of SJRWMD in Florida, World War II veterans, Florida business leaders, and Florida medical and nursing schools. We are also processing interviews on University of North Florida history conducted by Dr. James Crooks. Dr. Crooks is a faculty member at UNF.
- We have been working with Alan Bliss, a UF Graduate Student, who is compiling a history of the Bayfront Medical Center in the Tampa area. Mr. Bliss received funding to conduct and process these interviews.
- The Oral History Program is continuing its last year in a three-year contract by the SJRWMD to conduct oral history interviews relating to the history of Water Management Districts. Daniel Simone (UF Ph.D. student) and Dr. Pleasants have both conducted research and interviews for this project. Mr. Simone has also conducted a series of interviews relating to the Jet Port.
- Diane Fischler continues to work on compiling indexes of interviews. She has completed indexing the Florida Water Management Project. She has also indexed all the Florida Seminole interviews to be used in an upcoming publication by Dr. Pleasants and Dr. Harry Kersey. Diane is now working on the compilation of indexes of our World War II Collection. This highly valuable collection includes collaboration with Ken Samuelson in North Carolina and Nick Mueller at the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans.
- Ann Smith is also compiling indexes. She has completed indexes on our Federal Judges of the Middle District Courts Project. Ann currently is indexing interviews with Vietnam War veterans.
Digitization
In collaboration with the UF Digital Library Center and the Florida Center for Library Automation, SPOHP is currently working to produce a Digital Catalogue of its archive. The project has three motives to digitize:
- Digitization allows interviews to be catalogued online, making the collection word-searchable from anywhere in the world and improving intellectual access to the collection.
- Digitization preserves irreplaceable interviews recorded on degrading, outmoded media.
- Digitization permits interviews to be linked with complementary archival holdings at the University of Florida, resulting in unique and mutually reinforcing sets of primary sources on a broad range of historical topics.
Thus, in one stroke, this project will rescue historical materials available nowhere else and provide a wider audience with vastly improved access to these resources. This new technology will also allow the UF Library to include audio and video clips in our collection.
Caleb and Michele Grimes, UF graduates, have generously provided $25,000 to support our digitization project. We are grateful for their gift.
We have scanned more than 30,000 pages of interview transcripts. Lourdes FinoSanchez has been scanning transcripts and editing them through "text mark-up" in the Digital Library office. The Digital Library staff continues to move forward on preparing text for this collection. We went "live" in Fall 2006 with a majority of our collection and continue to work with the Digital Library to complete our collection online.
Digital Audio and Video
SPOHP has begun a technological advance and has purchased digital equipment. We now have both audio and video digital recording equipment. This is an important step forward for our program. Click here and read about “The Importance of Digitizing Oral Histories (PDF).”
