The oral history program at the University of Kentucky (UK) was recently featured in the Lexington Herald-Leader for developing technology that inexpensively and efficiently enhances access to oral history online. The UK Libraries created the unique system, the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer, in 2008. The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in UK Libraries’ Special Collections a National Leadership Grant in 2011 to continue developing the synchronizer.
The synchronizer enables staff or student workers to tag an interview with searchable keywords that take the listener to relevant portions of the interview. The Nunn Center hopes to make the system available via free open-source distribution sometime in 2014.
The UK Libraries’ Nunn Center for Oral History has a collection of around 9,000 interviews, over 700 of which are now available online via the Kentucky Digital Library and the ExploreUK website.
Read the June 30 Lexington Herald-Leader article by Taylor Harrison, “University of Kentucky’s Oral History Program ‘Potentially Revolutionary’.”
