2011 Election Information

Oral History Section 2011 Election Results

Doug Boyd    

As oral history methodology grows increasingly popular and as digital technologies for recording, curating, and disseminating oral histories rapidly change, it is paramount that the oral history and archival communities continue to actively engage and the Oral History Section of SAA plays a critical role in that dialogue.  The Oral History Section has done an excellent job of keeping oral history at the forefront of archival discussion and I would be honored to be a member of this team once more.

Doug Boyd Ph.D. serves as the Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries and is a recognized national leader regarding oral history, archives and digital technologies.   He is currently managing the IMLS grant project Oral History in the Digital Age establishing current best practices for collecting, curating and disseminating oral histories.  The grant is directed by MATRIX at Michigan State University and partners the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Oral History Association and the American Folklore Society.  Additionally, Boyd led the team that envisioned, designed and implemented the open source OHMS system that synchronizes text with audio and video online.  His recent publications include “Achieving the Promise of Oral History in a Digital Age,” a chapter in The Oxford Handbook to Oral History (Oxford University Press), and he is the author of the book Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community published in July 2011 by the University Press of Kentucky.  He recently produced the documentary Quest for the Perfect Bourbon: Voices of Buffalo Trace Distillery.

Doug regularly teaches both archives and oral history courses for the University of Kentucky’s School of Library and Information Science.  Previously, he managed the Digital Program for the University of Alabama Libraries, served as the Director of the Kentucky Oral History Commission and prior to that worked as the Senior Archivist for the oral history collection at the Kentucky Historical Society.   Doug served on the SAA Oral History Section Steering Committee in 2008 and is currently serving on the Oral History Association’s executive council.  Doug Boyd received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Folklore from Indiana University and his B.A. degree in History from Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

Morna Gerrard

In my capacity as the Women’s Collection Archivist at the Georgia State University Library, I manage two oral history projects, the Georgia Women’s Movement Oral History Project, and the Activist Women Oral History Project. I have made presentations about these projects at the Society of American Archivists conference (2005) and the Oral History Association Conference (2008). I was on the Local Arrangements Committee for the 2010 Oral History Association Conference, and in 2011, was named the winner of MAC’s Margaret Cross Norton Award for my Archival Issues article, “Hear them Roar: Challenge and Collaborations in Putting the Georgia Women’s Movement Oral History Project on the Web.”

I consider oral history to be a vital tool for documenting the human experience, as it not only provides an unauthorized, personal perspective, and takes us behind the official history of events and institutions, but it also gives us an intimate look into the lives of the ordinary, and of the under-documented. This is an exciting time to be an oral historian, as well as a professional who manages oral history projects.  In a time when technology is shifting rapidly and demands for greater access are up against increasingly restricted budgets, it is important that our colleagues collaborate by voicing concerns, sharing ideas and heralding successes. Being a member of SAA’s Oral History Section provides the forum and community for all of that, and has never been more crucial. I would be honored to serve the Section on its Steering Committee.

Bertram Lyons

My first attempt at oral history was for the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) in 2005. SFA was collecting gumbo histories from native New Orleanians. I wanted to add my grandmother's story to the pot. I had been working for four years before that as archivist for the Alan Lomax Collection in New York. I understood the value of the spoken word and the value of oral history through Lomax's work; I had not understood it through my own work until this attempt to document my grandmother's memories. The experience was invaluable to me personally and
professionally. In general, since 2002, my work as an archivist has been steeped in collections of oral history, folklore, and other forms of intangible cultural heritage, such as ritual, song, and spoken word. I value the work of the Oral History Section because it is situated as an alternative voice for the validity of oral documentation and human memory in a Society that stems from a tradition of written documentation and physical evidence. Not only do I applaud the Section's willingness to develop projects to involve SAA members and fellow archivists as oral historians, but I am excited to be a part of an SAA Section that reminds its colleagues that not all that is valuable is written, and not all that is valuable will be written: history is spoken by the people who live it.

I am a Certified Archivist as of 2010. I work as Folklife Specialist and Digital Assets Manager with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, where I support archival projects such as the Veteran's History Project, StoryCorps, America Works, and many other oral historical and folklore projects in the collections of the Library. Previously I served seven years as Archivist at the Alan Lomax Archive (Association for Cultural Equity) in New York and two years as Media-Preservation Specialist at the University of Kansas Libraries. I am a member of the Society of American Archivists (appointee to the Membership Committee and chair of the Recorded Sound Roundtable), the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, and the American Association of Museums. Over the past seven years I have published articles regularly on archival principles and practices and I present research at professional and academic conferences, such as the Society of American Archivists, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, and the Society for Ethnomusicology. I received my Master's degree in Museum Studies and American Studies from the University of Kansas. I would be honored to serve as a steering committee member of the Oral History Section of the Society of American Archivists.

Society of American Archivists
Oral History Section
Web Liaison | Jennifer Eidson
Created | 18 June 2010
Last Updated | 14 September 2011