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From Dust Bowl to Digital Highway: Celebrating 100 Years of Oklahoma

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From Dust Bowl to Digital Highway: Celebrating 100 Years of Oklahoma
Suzanne Sears, Tulsa City-County Library
A presentation at Encyclo-Media 2006, Oklahoma City, OK
31 August 2006

is the gov’t documents librarian in her library system, has been there 22 years
has done a lot of programming all over the state
was just invited to present at Texas Library Association

Oklahoma History Resources: http://www.tulsalibrary.org/govdocs/okhistory.htm

Today’s presentation:
From Dust Bowl to Digital Highway: http://www.tulsalibrary.org/govdocs/dustbowl.ppt
Suzanne Sears
918.596.7946
ssears [at] tulsalibrary [dot] org

I usually have 80-100 slides in my preso, so today I did not waste trees by printing all those for you, but you can just download the presentation from the web
I don’t put notes in PPT tho, b/c I talk off the top of my head

First, set of links from the Tulsa-City links (see first link above)

Beryl Ford Collection
took pictures of NE Oklahoma, enormous amount of photographs of those area
as far as I know, the digitization has been completed
you can access those and use them as you wish
www.berylfordcollection.com
Are 1862 pictures as of today that have been digitized and put into the collection, for keyword searching or searching by title and subject (fully cataloged)
Icon to the right indicates it is from the Beryl Ford collection
There are NOT any major copyright restrictions, these are put up as public domain photos, we would like people to give attribution tho

MY THOUGHT: IT MIGHT BE GREAT TO USE DIGITAL STORYTELLER TO DO A PROJECT RELATING TO THIS CONTENT

Pathfinder resources for Dust Bowl
history specialist has put together resources
sites have been checked out, are reliable
also is one for OK History
Go to Tulsa/Oklahoma online research center

I REALLY LIKE THE IDEA OF HAVING KIDS DO PRIMARY RESEARCH ALSO

Database of local publications for Tulsa being put together: LOTS of old Tulsa magazines, painstakingly indexing magazines, so people can have access to them
in the past, the collection was just browseable, not searchable
you can request publications and they can be faxed to you (these are not being digitized presently)

Earthquake history of Oklahoma resources
Oklahoma’s top 10 weather events of the 20th century (dust bowl is #1)

State of Oklahoma’s history page is very brief: does have state icon, children’s song, etc

OSU has done a great job of digitizing historical info
have The Oklahoma Periodicals Index
Can search by years, by the periodical of interest, or browse for a particular topic
“The Chronicles of Oklahoma” is a major periodical for Oklahoma

Digital collections from OSU
focusing a lot on Indian Affairs
older issues of “Chronicles of Oklahoma” (pre-2000)
from Oklahoma Historical Society
First 10 are digitized and online
Volumes 21-40 are available in PDF
table of contents available
you still have to search in several places, but these are works in progress
librarians know the centennial is coming, so they are working on them
Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties is a very popular resource
“The Organic Act of 1890” is an example: this divided up Oklahoma by tribe
in 1906 you have the law that gave us Oklahoma instead of the Indian Territory

My favorite site: American Memory website from the Library of Congress
they are constantly adding new collections
the LOC is digitizing their collections: multimedia files: pictures, sound files, more

A couple ways to browse the collections, several are very specific to Oklahoma
can browse by broad topics
also have “today in history” link and does have archives (can search archives for topic or a particular day)
each photograph has its name and also the name of the collection it is included in
also have transcriptions of primary interviews, like pioneer interviews

Click “more browse options” to get more defined subject headings in Amercian Memory
can also browse by time period, or browse by place, or by the type of media included
Oklahoma is included in “western US” in American memory
put in your keyword
Oklahoma is a fairly new state, so in some searches it is listed as Oklahoma Territory
So West US has 24 collections: you can uncheck collections that you don’t want to include
the collection title doesn’t always tell you want is in the collection

]She has taken screenshots of web searches, so she is showing things offline rather than doing live web searches. It would be a good idea to have screen captures like this to use for presentations, in case the Internet is not available]

Maps generally will have a zoom view and a navigation view

Sheet music that was published is also included
Library of Congress websites DO have copyright restrictions all over them, you need to read the fine print on each item to see how its use is restricted

a “list all collections” option is also available
“Voices from the Dustbowl” is an available collection
Also “Woody Guthrie and American Folk Song” collection
have some interviews with people in California

Played example audio interview of farmers in a dust storm in 1934, listen to it first
these are country folk talking about what they did
how cows died from smothering
sometimes dust storms would be 30-40 min, sometimes they would last several days

Woody Guthrie collection is mostly manuscripts
– you can subscribe to LOC’s American Memory so you are notified when a new collecton is added

Next few projects are definitely under construction!

Encyclopedia of  Oklahoma History and Culture from the Oklahoma Historical Society
Homestead Act of 1962

[MY THOUGHT: WE SHOULD HAVE A STATE INITIATIVE TO WRITE AND IMPROVE ON THE WIKIPEDIA ENTRIES RELATING TO MANY OF THESE TOPICS]

Oklahoma Crossroads: Documents and Images has only been up since mid-August 200
best way to access this now is “by collection”
do have 100 years of Oklahoma governors digitized
African American Crossroads: Red Bird, Creek Nation is an example, one of the first all-black settlements in Oklahoma
“The Blacks in Oklahoma” by Jimmie Lewis Franklin is online full-text
have navigation panes like other sites
Is a nice series, are other books for different ethnic groups

ODL is planning to digitize ALL the “newcomers in a new land” series

Have some Oklahoma Race Riot information

Tulsa County Library is working on a local history page
hoping for an October 2006 launch
www.tulsalibrary.org/tulsahistory/ (just says “coming” now)

With Beryl Ford project, we got the digitization machines required
we have to deal with copyright permissions, but they are working on that for the local history page

I serve all US citizens, not just Tulsa community taxpayers, and my library supports that
part of the reason we were given the award we received

Devon Energy Company is making the “Daily Oklahoman” newspaper archives available
Andrea O’Guinn is the point of contact
this has been advertised in The Daily Oklahoman for

No videoconferencing being done by Tulsa libraries yet

[I NEED TO MAKE A WIKI ON OKLAHOMA HISTORY FOR THE 100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY]

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