Illinois State Museum - Oral History of Illinois Agriculture

The Oral History of Illinois Agriculture project is developing a new interactive Web module - the Audio-Video Barn - featuring digital oral-history interviews with people involved in various aspects of agriculture and rural life in Illinois.

The project is a joint venture of the Illinois State Museum and four partner institutions: the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM); Regional History Center, Founders Memorial Library, Northern Illinois University (NIU); Brookens Library, University of Illinois-Springfield (UIS); and Randforce Associates LLC, University at Buffalo Technology Incubator, State University of New York (SUNY).

The team also includes consultants in oral history and agriculture from Eastern Illinois University (EIU), Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIUC), the University of Illinois-Springfield (UIS), the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDA), the Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB), and Texas A&M University (TAMU).

The Oral History of Illinois Agriculture project is generously supported by a two-year National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The IMLS awarded a grant of $564,651 to the Illinois State Museum Society on September 25, 2007. Dr. Robert E. Warren (ISM) is Principal Investigator of the project. Stephen Leonard (ALPLM) is Co-Principal Investigator.

To date, the Oral History of Illinois Agriculture project has digitized 63 old audio interviews from the NIU and UIS library archives. In partnership with the ALPLM, the project has also recorded 72 new oral-history interviews with a diverse array of people from throughout Illinois. Most of the new interviews are being recorded on digital video, so that both sights and sounds will be available in the Audio-Video Barn Web module. Summaries of our progress can be found in two interim reports to the IMLS (First Interim Report; Second Interim Report). We are currently working on indexing and transcribing digital video, creating educational resources, and developing the Audio-Video Barn Web module.

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