| Center for Oral History Programs The Center for Oral History Programs was created within the Division of Library and Archives in 2004 to create innovative oral history and story-collecting projects that represent the diverse populations in the greater metropolitan St. Louis region. The center conducts focused programs of oral history collection and trains MHS staff and volunteers in oral history techniques. The Center continues work begun by the Society’s former Research Center. Two community-based oral history projects that staff conducted in the 1990s through the early 2000s focused on the changing nature of urban life in the twentieth century. People and Place in Twentieth-Century St. Louis was an exploration of community change since 1920 in six selected neighborhoods scattered across the metropolitan region. The staff of the center are currently working to make these interviews available through the Society’s Archives. Through the Eyes of a Child focused more specifically on the experiences of African Americans growing up in four St. Louis neighborhoods between 1940 and 1980. The Eyes project generated an award-winning documentary, an Historyonics play, an exhibit in the Missouri History Museum, and a curriculum unit for middle-schoolers in the metropolitan region. Work is in progress to make the oral histories and transcripts from these two projects available to researchers in the Library and Research Center Reading Room. For more information on the Through the Eyes of a Child project, please visit coe.umsl.edu/projects/dighistory/eyesofachild. |