Liberal Studies This Week

One of the best kept secrets at UIS is that in the early days of our university, we had an active Oral History office. I’m far from an expert on this topic but my simple description of oral history is that it is an effort to interview people who have observed and participated in history (also known as everyday life while it is happening.)

You can find a guide to our Oral History collection here

There is a mix of transcriptions you can read and recordings of original interviews which were never transcripted. Some of the oral histories were parts of extended project and others are just interesting stand-alone interviews. I spent an hour or so reading an interview with one of the original SSU librarians (UIS was SSU in its earliest days.) It was remarkable interesting to hear how a university library collection comes into being. Once you have a million volumes, you never really think about the day in which you didn’t have any books, or even shelves.

Among the many projects, there is a series of interviews with people who have lived through the 1908 race riot in Springfield. You can read some of these transcripts but also find some of the recordings in iTunesU. Just open iTunes and search for 1908 race riot. You’ll find the oral history recordings under Revealing Voices which will be listed in the iTunesU section.