Do One Thing for Oral History on Oct. 27

If you work at an organization that has oral history collections, the Kentucky Oral History Commission and the Kentucky Historical Society wants you to commemorate Oral History Day in Kentucky – Thursday, Oct. 27, and Do One Thing to support oral history collections in the Commonwealth.

As organizations, maybe we can’t do everything we want – or need – to do with our oral history collections, but we can do (at least) one thing.

The activities you choose to perform should be guided by professional standards and best practices.

You might:

• Do One Thing to begin inventorying your collections.
• Do One Thing to establish a digitization workflow.
• Do One Thing to start implementing OHMS.
• Do One Thing to promote your collections.

The flexible design of Oral History Day welcomes participants from large organizations with robust oral history collections all the way to small shops with limited resources. You will do the work at your own site. Focus on your repository’s collection needs. Since not all of us have the same resources or collections, scale the work to whatever time and resources your institution can dedicate.

Kentucky Oral History Day will kick-off at 8:30 a.m. CST/9:30 a.m. EST with the 90-minute webinar, “Strategies for Implementing OHMS as Your Institution,” that will feature best practices for implementing OHMS and address challenges some organizations have faced in getting OHMS up and running. Attend the webinar and do your one thing to evaluate whether OHMS is the right fit for your institution. The webinar is free and open to the public. (See information below.)

This year, we hope you will Do One Thing for oral history in Kentucky. If you would like to participate, please fill out our Google form. If you have any questions or would like more information, don’t hesitate to contact me at 502.564.1792 or send an email to allison.tracy@ky.gov.

Webinar Information

Oral History Day 2016 Webinar: Strategies for Implementing OHMS as Your Institution
Date: Thursday, Oct. 27, 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time; 8:30 a.m. Central Time

The Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) is a powerful tool to make oral history collections more findable and usable. However, institutions can often run into trouble securing the digital infrastructure necessary to implement the program. In this webinar, presenters will discuss their attempts to implement OHMS (both successful and not), provide participants with tips on how to work with colleagues at their institutions to implement OHMS, and discuss considerations for choosing and securing the necessary infrastructure and services to run OHMS.

Panelists include Allison Tracy (Kentucky Oral History Commission), Doug Boyd (University of Kentucky), Daniel Weddington (University of Kentucky) and Andre Morrison (Eastern Kentucky University).

To Register:
1. Go here
2. Click “Register.”
3. On the registration form, enter your information and then click “Submit.”

Once your registration is received, you will receive a confirmation email message with instructions on how to join the event.