Louie B. Nunn Veterans Oral History Project

We live and learn by our role models and oral histories give us a sense of competency and understanding for living our lives

In 2012 the Oldham County Historical Society expanded its oral history program when it entered into a partnership with The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky.  The purpose of the partnership is to archive, preserve and support ongoing oral history initiatives created by the Oldham County History Center in LaGrange, Kentucky.

The Oldham County History Center has been collecting oral histories since 2001, including interviews with veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Many of these interviews have been transcribed and published in the Oldham County Neighborhood section of the Louisville Courier Journal.  In 2007 the Oldham County History Center began an initiative called Living Treasures, to interview people, 60 years or older, who live or have lived in Oldham County.

The UK Libraries Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History is internationally recognized for its collection of over 8,000 interviews and for creating innovative digital tools for accessing oral histories online and providing for  long term digital preservation. “This is a model partnership” says Dr. Doug Boyd, Nunn Center director.  “They have conducted many high quality interviews in their community and want to continue.” Boyd notes that, “The Nunn Center provides Oldham County the opportunity to put their interviews online using state of the art solutions, while providing the best ongoing framework with regard to the long term curation of these unique interviews.”

The archival component of the partnership involves the Nunn Center accessioning 200 oral history interviews into the UK collection and digitizing the interviews for both access and preservation. The interviews are prepared for online access in the Nunn Center’s OHMS system.  The OHMS system, created by the Nunn Center and UK Libraries Digital Library Services, is a web-based tool to inexpensively and efficiently enhance access to, and discovery of, oral histories online. Access Oldham’s Histories HERE.

The OHMS system provides users word-specific search capability and a time-correlated transcript or index, connecting the textual search term to the corresponding moment in the recorded online interview.  The Nunn Center will train members of the Oldham County community to use the OHMS system to index the interviews for access in UK’s innovative online system. Additionally, the Nunn Center will serve as an ongoing resource to the Oldham County community providing training for future oral history initiatives.

“In today’s fast paced world these histories help to ground us by providing the embedded knowledge of experiences from people in our recent past.  We live and learn by our role models and oral histories give us a sense of competency and understanding for living our lives. We look forward to working with the Nunn Center and the University of Kentucky to help continue to use oral history to fulfill our mission of research and historical preservation.”

The partnership with the Louie B. Nunn Oral History Department at the University of Kentucky seems a natural evolution of the Oldham County History Center’s focus on research and education.  “Using the expedited process of digitization to all of the tapes we have collected and housing the originals at the University of Kentucky not only protects the tapes for perpetuity but will allow greater access to our oral histories, all over the world!” according to Theiss.

Access Oldham’s Veteran Oral Histories HERE

 

 

Join us to “Hop On for a Ride with a Veteran” at the Oldham County History Center at the “Road Warrior” Sculpture featuring WWII Marine veteran Dr. E. Bruce Heilman on his Marine-issue Harley in historic downtown LaGrange.

Be sure to visit Oldham’s Veterans Memorial Park of Kentucky located at 5901 Veterans Memorial Pkwy, Crestwood, Kentucky  40014