DELAINEY BOWERS
FOLKLORIST + ARCHIVIST + LIBRARIAN
INTERNSHIPS
KENTUCKY ORAL HISTORY COMMISSION
Summer 2018
Over the course of the summer I worked closely with the Kentucky Oral History Commission and Western Kentucky University’s Folklife Archives to make a regionally-specific oral history collection available to a public audience. As a graduate student with feet planted firmly in folk studies and archives, I was curious as to how I could find points of intersection between public and academic institutions in regards to preservation, digitization, presentation, and accessibility to oral history collections.
After choosing a collection, "The Civilian Conservation Corps at Mammoth Cave National Park Oral History Project," I used a web-based application called the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer to link together audio from the interviews with their transcription counterparts. These interviews were also tagged with relevant metadata and indexed for more simplified browsing.
To view completed samples of my OHMS-based interview projects, click
MONROE COUNTY HISTORY CENTER
Spring 2016
While working towards my MLS at Indiana University, I served as an intern in the Research Library at the Monroe County History Center. The bulk of my work was centered on creating an updated online oral history index. Due to the relatively small size of the library's oral history collection, I was able to provide descriptive bibliographic data for each project. Browse the fully searchable collection here.
I also designed an online exhibit titled "'A New Place to Roost': The Lake Monroe Oral History Project." The website, which includes snippets of audio recordings, photographs, and other ephemera, tells the story of Salt Creek Valley in south central Indiana that was destroyed during the construction of the Lake Monroe Reservoir. Based on a folk studies dissertation published in 1986, the online exhibit seeks to reanimate the personal narratives of a "drowned town." To visit the website, click here.
