Late and last post about the oral history and new adventures in the archives

Hello there!

This is an incredibly late post, but at least it is here!

My last day at the South Dakota Oral History Center was last Monday. It was a little sad to go because I learned so much in the short time I was there. I felt a little better leaving when I received a notification about a release form that I had been tasked with on day one of my internship.
Quick shout out to Sam, the director of the program who taught me so much about the OHC and I hope that I can continue to be involved in educating the public about oral histories.

Last Wednesday I began my stint at the special archives located in library. I took a tour of the archival collections, got a little lost and confused, and overall had a good first day. These first few weeks of my internship up here will involve photographs and preservation and after today's discussion regarding the work I will be doing and some of the unique techniques that we have here, I am really excited to learn more,

Stay tuned in a couple of days for some reading reviews and a wrap up of thoughts for the week.

Peace,

-Kylie


  

"The Good War" and other musings

Hello there friends!

I have two parts to this post. For my internship I had to review a book called "The Good War" by Studs Terkel. It is a compilation of oral histories regarding people's experiences of World War II and the consequences of the war. It contains some really amazing insights into civilian and military experiences. What I find is that some of the thoughts of civilians concerning the post war era and the beginning of the Cold War is reminiscent of the language I am familiar regarding the post 9/11 era.
In the epilogue there are several short interview made by people reflecting the baby-boomer era.
   Debbie Cooney's interview is one that stuck out to me greatly:
             

              "I was around ten when I came aware of the bomb. It didn't have any great impact on me until a year ago, I have a niece who is eighteen months old now. . . I want her to be able to live and go out in the country and just breathe without having to worry or anything. I think a lot of times I do it more for myself because I've at least had seventeen years of life. I've at least had sort of chance. She's eighteen months old and she's just wonderful. So I just want her to have a chance"

                Terkel, Studs. "The Good War". New York City, NY: Pantheon Books, 1984. pgs. 587-588.

I can't help but compare 17 year old Debbie Cooney's thoughts to mine especially since I had a similar experience with the events after 9/11. It did not worry or concern me when I was little and even when U.S. soldiers were being deployed, all I really thought about was it was sad that they could not be home. Now that I have a brother in the military and he and his wife are expecting a little baby I look back fifteen years and wonder what will be in store for my nephew in the next fifteen years.


These are often the hard and innumerable thoughts that people face every day. Recorded or not, those thoughts have an impact on how an individual, family, community perceives history, and that is important.

Peace,

-Kylie

Oral History is under appreciated: A defense

Hello Friends!

After a very full first week of the semester I am here to say that I love working in the Library and the National Museum Museum.

I am not saying this because technically this blog is part of my grade (Hi Lisa!)
I say this because the things I like about history come alive in the archives and the museum.

The first month of my internship is at the South Dakota Oral History Center (SDOHC) and if there is one thing that I have realized is that oral history is an underappreciated resource. At the SDOHC there are over five thousand interviews from the peoples of region. Immigrants and Native American voices fill shelves and hard drives here at the I.D. Weeks library, yet everytime I open a folder and I have to shake the dust off of my hands I feel a little sad.
These people took time to tell their story. It may not be big history but the interviews not only record daily life, they reflect the lifeblood of the region. Big history can be seen through several lenses including that of oral histories.

Do you know how some of the Lakota and Dakota people felt about the Pick-Sloan project?    
Did you know that in Sioux Falls a bank was robber by one of the most infamous bank robbers in the early 20th century?
The Cold War was on the minds of many people- including South Dakotans.

The three topics above are simply a taste of topics that I have come across while working the in the SDOHC.

Oral history also keeps alive the stories that are uniquely an individuals. Grandparents, teachers, senators, all have stories to tell that are important.
Oral histories are also not very difficult to do and there has been a push by several agencies to preserve the voices of our community (StoryCorps is a huge example).
If you have a spare moments, take the time to go to the Youtube page:
https://www.youtube.com/user/SDOralHistoryCenter

or if you simply want to peruse the archives go to the South Dakota Oral History Center page at the USD library.  
http://www.usd.edu/library/sdohc

If you have questions regarding how to do a oral history reach out! I would love to talk and help!
Peace,

-Kylie 

The First Day also known as when dressing up is not the correct clothing choice

Hello there!

Today was officially my first day of my internships! Now, first of all, I am so excited for this semester. I love to learn new information and skills and the wealth of knowledge that is contained at the library and National Music Museum (NMM) will certainly provide me an array of opportunities this semester.

Today at the I.D. Weeks Library I was introduced to the archives and shown around the special collections before being turned over to the South Dakota Oral History Center director for the next 5 weeks.

For those of you who are not familiar with what oral history is there are a lot of really excellent resources that you can peruse for your edification but The Oral History Association has an excellent definition that I will leave a link to as well as a link from their site that talks about doing good oral histories.

 http://www.oralhistory.org/about/do-oral-history/

http://www.oralhistory.org/web-guides-to-doing-oral-history/


I will have more updates regarding my adventures at the Oral History Center as the weeks progress.


In addition to my introduction at the library I had a few hours of my NMM internship today as well. A significant portion of my hours will be working on a huge project the entire community of NMM people are working on (I will talk about that in a different post)

In short though, today I helped place instruments in a light box so that the museum had good quality images for the website. As a person who barely uses a point and shoot camera let alone those HUGE fancy cameras that do some incredible technological magic.

I learned how photo light boxes work (kind of) and placed many saxophones into said light box to be photographed. This required me to crawl under a sheet between takes (each instrument gets  3 pictures, but I will show you that next week) to re-position the instrument. I didn't realize that I would be doing this sort of work today so instead of wearing shorts or pants I was wearing my favorite yellow skirt because I had wanted to look nice for my first day at both of my internships. I made it work as I half crawled/crouched under the sheets of the light box. I did not drop or break any instruments- although a metal base clarinet tried to escape after I had placed it on its little stand. Thank goodness for fishing line! I will make sure that next week I will be in work type clothing and I do promise that I will link a video of what the entire process looks like because it is really neat!

Until next time friends,

-Kylie

  

Start of a new adventure

Hello Friends!

You know that I am terrible at posting updates on blogs and such but this semester I have to update a blog for my new internship!

A brief recap of why I am back in Vermillion, South Dakota:


The South Dakota Board of Regents approved a certificate in Museum and Archival studies here at the University of South Dakota this past May. I  had expressed an interest in working at a museum or library to Dr. Burrow, a professor in the history department and head of the graduate students in said department. He told me that I should come back in the fall since all I needed were the internship credits to complete the certificate. After weighing all of my options available to me I emailed him and let him know that I would come back.

It works out to my advantage because I still have to complete my thesis (pray for me you guys, I think writing this thesis will bring me to an early grave.) I also get some really awesome hands on training at the USD I.D. Weeks Library and the National Music Museum.

In the blog you will find reflections on reading that I have to to for my library internship (Hello Lisa!) and musing I have as I discover what it is like to work in an archive and museum.

I also hope to have Youtube videos throughout this semester. The link below is to my channel- despite it looking super drab right now. I will spiffy it up sooner rather than later.

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNyuzWgIA5pizwxieckmERQ



Peace and Hugs!

-Kylie