Nunn Center Launches Online Resource on Digital Technologies

the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History has launched its new online initiative Oral History and Digital Technology to provide a series of educational resources on digital technologies associated with oral history fieldwork. The series has begun with informational videos by Nunn Center Director Doug Boyd discussing popular digital recorders beginning with the Marantz PMD 671 solid state recorder.




Other informational resources will accompany the videos including a resource which will discuss the basics of digital recording. Stay tuned and subscribe to the Nunn Center channel on YouTube

March Madness

1904 University of Kentucky Men's Basketball Team -- 2001ua025:0023

Head to the Hub in W.T. Young Library to see the exhibit "March Madness: A History of UK Basketball in Images." In addition, other screens in the Hub will be showing historic games in UK Men's Basketball, including the entire 1978 NCAA Championship game against Duke. The exhibit runs through March.

About athletics materials in the University of Kentucky Archives:

Since its creation in the 1930s, the University Archives has endeavored to preserve the history of UK athletics. During these 60 years, the Archives has amassed one of the finest athletics collections in the United States, which now includes over 5000 videotapes, 1500 audiotapes, 1500 films, 3000 photographs, 30 scrapbooks, and 250 boxes of clippings, programs, and media guides. The collection is heavily used by researchers, often requiring reproductions of films, videotapes, and photographs.

Sports are a part of our collective popular culture and also connected to the tradition of excellence at the University of Kentucky. Long after sporting events have faded from recent history the images, the accomplishments, and the records set continue to live in our collective memories. The University Archives has the important role of ensuring that the sights, the sounds, the facts, and goals are more than a memory.

Later this year, Explore UK will launch an amazing online resource for Kentucky basketball fans and researchers including basketball programs, Cats Pause, ephemera, and photographs!

Kentucky's role in the war effort

The notion of the war effort can be traced back to the French Revolution when leaders called for citizens to form a lavee en masse to prevent monarchist forces from reclaiming control of government. The World II version took a slightly different approach. People were encourage to feed their families with food they had grown so food could be shipped to the troops fighting overseas.

The Kentucky Extension Service's war production effort in 1943 included the canning of 86,392,244 quarts of foods, nearly 70 quarts for every man, woman and child on the farms in the state. Kentuckians also preserved 9,068,097 containers of butter, jams and jellies. A total of 114,452 families, nearly half of those living on Kentucky farms, grew 75 percent or more of their food supply.

Pictured above is Mrs. Guy Penick of Fayette Co., KY showing off some of the 1,200 jars she canned in 1943 as part of the war effort.

You never know what you will find

This photograph is further proof that you never know what you are going to find at University Archives and Records Program. Pictured here is Mrs. C.H. Ray of Elizabethtown, KY. She is posing with her winning entry in the national "Fowl Fashion" competition. The competition, sponsored by the Poultry & Egg National Board, was one "in which the feathered folk strut their stuff in costumes their ingenious owners had created for them from poultry feed bag material," according to Jane Watson former publicity director of the Poultry & Egg National Board. Although the date of the photo is unknown there is something about a "fowl fashion" competition that is perhaps timeless.

How the times can change

We at Special Collections were a little concerned when we came across this photograph while processing an agriculture collection. It depicts "war-famed DDT bug bomb for civilians." Published in 1962 Silent Spring, by American biologist Rachel Carson, warned of the environmental and human health concerns associated with the indiscriminate spraying DDT. The book suggested that DDT and other pesticides potentially caused cancer and were detrimental to wildlife. The particular canister in this photograph "is said to contain enough insecticide to debug several average-size homes." Perhaps a case of overkill?

New Online Resource

Search or browse University of Kentucky Yearbooks!

Explore thousands of historic images!

Discover the Board of Trustees Minutes!

see for yourself at

http://exploreuk.uky.edu

Happy Birthday Elvis

So, perhaps this is a stretch - even for me. Nonetheless, Happy Birthday Elvis! In honor of the Elvis Sandwich (fried bread, peanut butter, BANANAS, and some say bacon) we post this photo of women buying bananas from Phil "the fruit man" Pearling's banana cart. This cart was an early campus vending operation, circa 1880s.