Roots with Wings, a Floyd County Place-Based Education Project:: Intergenerational Connections

Floyd Story Center

Since 1998, a community oral history collection partnership of the Old Church Gallery, Ltd., Radford University’s Center for Social and Cultural Research, Honors Program, Scholar-Citizen Initiative, Appalachian Regional and Rural Studies Center, and Floyd County High School. Our archives now hold over 100 interviews.

In our Roots with Wings project, college mentors, high school staff, and community volunteers meet weekly during the school year to teach the discipline of oral history collection.


Students learn ethical, methodologically sound interview techniques, practice and complete several interviews, transcribe the audiotapes, create searchable content logs, archive interviewee resources and period photographs, learn the technology of audio and video recording, research historical backgrounds, acquire proficiency in iMovie and storytelling, and finally extract a theme from an hour long interview to create a seven minute movie production.

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Adventures in Omeka Database Software

Creating an Online Organizational Tool


This past June, with the assistance of a George Mason University graduate student intern, Tim Smith and Kathleen Ingoldsby began the process of developing a new online access tool for the vast collection of historical data now held at the Old Church Gallery oral history and collections archives.

We first corralled the types of information into a structured index, which would serve as the eventual basis for an online menu.  Large manila sheets were diagrammed in the process, complete with arrows, underlines, and ideas, and, after much back and forth, we landed on a very complete archives category scheme.

Bat Altankhuyag (GMU intern), Tim Smith, Kathleen Ingoldsby, summer 2019, Old Church Gallery.  Item pictured on iMac screen is of a feedsack quilt from the current exhibit.  Photo: Wanda Combs

Bat Altankhuyag made two site visits to the Gallery and was able to help with many online work sessions off site.   We determined that by entering one sample item in each field or category, we could then refine those, heading off any problems or issues as we went along.  This worked well,  and we managed quite a few fixes in the process of navigating our final product.  

When complete, Floyd Folklife Gallery & Archives will showcase our oral history and permanent collections with image, media, and information displays. Although the site is "not quite ready for primetime," we are well on our way, so please do stay tuned!

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