| The Oral History Collection at UNC-Charlotte began in the 1960's,
with a grant request by Dr. Bonnie Cone for the "Caroliniana
Oral History Project," a "creative new project covering
new ground" that would involve the library and an advisory board
of faculty and community representatives to plan interviews with "North
Carolinian writers, politicans, educators, businessman, and other
leading citizens." While a formal advisory board did not materialize,
oral history at UNCC did when, in 1967, Mr. LeGette Blythe, journalist,
biographer, and writer in residence at UNCC, began interviewing prominent
North Carolinians. These reel to reel recordings provide the origins
of our collection.
In 1979, the collection was expanded when historian Dr. Ed Perzel
and a handful of dedicated volunteers collected 79 oral history interviews
in cooperation with WSOC radio station. The goal was to record elderly
citizens across the city and county, as they reminisced about their
youth and early experiences from 1890 through World War II.
Since that time the collection has grown to over 1800 interviews,
collected in part by faculty, staff, and students on a wide range
of topics related to local and regional history. We serve as the repository
for oral histories collected by University departments, such as the
History and English departments, and for community institutions partnered
with UNCC. Additionally, Special Collections staff collect oral interviews
to complement and fill gaps in our local history collections.
As our collections continue to grow, we strive to improve access
to the interviews and to preserve them for the future. Our goal is
to organize and prepare the interviews for research use by students,
faculty and the general public. In keeping with that goal and thanks
to grants from NC ECHO and the State Library of North Carolina, we
were able to create New
South Voices, a growing database of transcripts and audio of interviews
from our collections.
For more information about the Oral History Collection, contact Katie
McCormick.
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