Two Branches of the Primary Source River: Managing Oral History Interviews and Related Archival Materials

• In Event: OHA Poster Session and Project Bazaar

Abstract

Oral history and archives collections are both unpublished primary sources and have much in common descriptively, including the basic requirement to devise creator names, titles, dates, extents, and content and historical notes. However, these two types of sources develop in different ways and for different reasons. Oral history interviews are structured conversations between narrator and interviewer for the purpose of recollecting a historically significant past. Archives are documents created or acquired during the life of an individual, family, or organization that have historical value because of their content and/or the evidence they provide of the life of their creator. But, what if the interviewer is offered archival material by the narrator, or, archival collections include oral histories? This poster will summarize three collection management streams for oral history and archival collections at the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center (SCRC). The focus will be on methods for accessioning oral histories and archival collections that were acquired from, relate to, or stem from the same agent(s). The poster comments on long-standing questions about managing primary source materials once the initial acquisition is complete, while explaining how SCRC uses new collection management systems with slightly different data structures (SPOKEdb and ArchivesSpace) in order to know what we have, how they are linked, and to help others find it.

Authors

• Ruth Bryan, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center

• Kopana Terry, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center