"Are You Ready for that Great Atomic Power?" Oral History, Bluegrass Music and a Museum/Archives Partnership

• In Event: The Music Scene: Oral History, Public History and Community Engagement

Abstract

The International Bluegrass Music Museum (IBMM) in Owensboro, Kentucky has been conducting video-based oral history interviews with Bluegrass musicians for over 20 years. The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History has recently partnered with the IBMM to become the official archival partner for this oral history project. This innovative museum/archival partnership, has been designed to maximize the impact and the sustainability of this oral history project.

The Nunn Center is partnering with the IBMM on multiple levels: to appropriately archive and preserve the legacy collections containing nearly 250 interviews, to provide innovative access to this collection online using OHMS, and to move the oral history project into an new phase of interviewing. This presentation will explore the dynamics and challenges of a museum and archival partnership, the role of innovative archival access in the presentation of oral history in the museum experience, as well as examine ways to better evaluate how audiences in this context engage with oral history.

Author

• Doug Boyd, University of Kentucky