A Digital Oral History: a collaborative project, connecting UNCW students to their Latino community

Abstract

Acting under the University’s mission of “commitment to diversity and inclusion, global perspectives, and enriching the quality of life through scholarly community engagement,” Randall Library staff recently completed a collaborative oral history project with students enrolled in a Spanish 490 seminar. This course was offered as one component of a larger NEH grant titled, “Latino Americans: 500 Years of History,” and provided students with an opportunity to interview individuals in the southeastern North Carolina Latino community. In addition to audio recordings, students captured photographs of the interviewees and created transcriptions of the interviews. In return, the library collaboratively compiled these interviews in a pilot digital collection titled, “Somos NC: Voices from North Carolina’s Latino Community.” This project exhibited values inherent in the University’s mission through its use of applied learning, preservation of an underrepresented community and showcase of student scholarship.

This poster will deliver a visual representation of the pilot project that showcases aspects of collaboration, offers a timeline of decisions made and provides examples of oral histories in the completed digital collection. Poster content will be formulated in a manner that describes how small to mid-sized libraries can accomplish similar projects in one semester with no funding.