2007 - 2010
EXPANDING HORIZONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
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 Stephen Sloan Director
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In August 2007, Baylor University welcomed Stephen Sloan as assistant professor in the Department of History and director of the Institute for Oral History. Dr. Sloan brought to Baylor a broad background in teaching and research, in addition to rich experience in oral history practice and program management. Find out here his plans for the Institute.
From the start, Dr. Sloan initiated measures to guide the Institute fully into the digital age, toward the goal of providing online access to sound files and transcripts gathered since 1970. Tremendous progress has been made.
• By summer 2008, under the dedicated direction of Senior Editor Elinor Mazé, the Institute celebrated the inclusion of its collection finding aid within Baylor University Library Digital Collections.
• Over the summer of 2008, Institute staff assessed the condition of its entire collection of analog sound recordings to prepare for ultimate digitization of open-reel and cassette tapes.
• During the 2008-2009 academic year, 350 memoir volumes comprising 50,500 typescript pages were digitized through the generous support of Baylor's Ray I. Riley Digitization Center.
• In January 2009, the Institute welcomed eighty-five guests from across Texas and the U.S. to FUTURE PERFECT: Retooling Oral History in the Digital Age. The one-day workshop offered expert training in digital audio and video recording, digitization, digital object management for access and preservation, and digital production. Workshop leaders were, from the Institute, Stephen Sloan, Elinor Mazé, and graduate assistant Rick Fair, and from Baylor's Electronic Library, Darryl Stuhr, Scott Myers, and Tony Tadey. Appearing by live video feed from George Mason University's Center for History and the New Media was Dan Cohen.
• Also in January 2009, the Institute launched its Digital Oral History Workshop within the Workshop on the Web.
• By February 2009 users of the Baylor oral history collection were able to access transcripts via electronic document delivery. This milestone marked the historic shift of the Institute to a full-service reference and research center, adding end-user assistance to our collecting, processing, teaching, studying, and publishing activities.
• Digitization of the collection's audio recordings had a great start with Baylor Electronic Library's audio engineer Tony Tadey at the controls. Tony guided our audio tape preservation survey and created prototype workflows for the massive transfer job. The complex sound digitization project includes creation of metadata files and a preservation master, as well as access copies. The project is continuing gradually as funding is available.
To continue the Institute's work in its own backyard, Dr. Sloan introduced a focused project on family-owned businesses in Waco. The project will document how family businesses persisted down the years, ways the businesses and community interacted, and patterns of succession from one generation to the next. Other local projects are gathering memories of local landmarks: Cameron Park, which marks its one-hundredth anniversary in 2010; and Waco's Freedom Fountain, which honors the community's effort to secure freedom for American prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Continuing its efforts to present local history from a variety of viewpoints, the Institute contracted with the Cooper Foundation to record the story of private philanthropy in Waco and Central Texas and collaborated with Paula Gerstenblatt's grassroots effort to document the overlooked history of the black community in the eastern McLennan County town of Mart.
Beginning in the spring of 2008, the Institute faculty conducted the first of twenty-three oral history workshops under contract with the Texas Historical Commission's Military Sites Program. Titled "Here and There: Recollections of World War II," the workshops will be held over two years in sites throughout Texas. Workshops in 2008 were held in the towns of Center, Paris, Del Rio, Panhandle, San Angelo, Frisco, Fort Worth, and Amarillo. On schedule for 2009 were workshops in Alpine, Tyler, Midland, Brownwood, College Station, Corpus Christi, Sweetwater, San Antonio, Lubbock, Brownsville, Houston, Waco, Palestine, and Victoria. In 2010, one final workshop was held, in January in El Paso.
In April 2008, the Institute hosted "A Fun Texas Odyssey," an evening of recorded sounds and stories from the Lone Star State presented by humorist, folklorist, radio personality, and oral historian Tumbleweed Smith (a.k.a. Bob Lewis). Over the last forty years, Smith has collected the largest private collection of oral history in the U.S., highlighting the fascinating characters and storytellers he comes across in traveling the state's back roads. Many of the stories he collects are broadcast on "The Sound of Texas," one of the state's longest-running syndicated radio programs, of which Smith is the creator and producer.
The Institute continued to promote local history and oral history practice through participation in the Heart of Texas Regional History Fair and the Waco History Project. In April 2008, for the Waco History Project, the Institute gathered together former South Waco residents who were scattered far and wide through urban renewal relocation programs, the expansion of the Baylor University campus, and the construction of Interstate 35. With stimulation from period maps, aerial view photos, and a "then and now" slide show, the participants talked with each other about long-gone schools, businesses, homes, and ways of life.
In July 2009, BUIOH conducted its first online workshop, "Getting Started with Oral History." Fifteen oral history newcomers hailing from Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Texas took part in the two-session interactive workshop. With very positive, enthusiastic responses from every participant, a waiting list of people in line for our next e-learning event, and our own assessment that the online workshop was just plain fun, BUIOH again offered its introductory workshop online in April and July of 2010.
In August 2010, BUIOH launched a weekly radio program based on its oral history collection. Aired on KWBU-FM 103.3 in Waco on Tuesdays, the program is titled Living Stories. The creator of the series is our editor, Michelle Holland, who also created a Web site to archive the programs. Listen to the programs at Living Stories.
