University of North Texas

The University of North Texas Department of Information Science and Department of History will partner with Baylor University, Queens Public Library, Oklahoma State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Texas at Austin to establish a community oral history/storytelling curatorial fellowship program to empower community oral history practitioners with the skills needed to successfully capture, document, and preserve their community history, memory, and stories. The team will recruit fifteen fellows, including archivists, librarians, museum curators, oral historians, and community memory workers, to participate in the program. The fellows will complete a series of online learning modules, attend an intensive two-day workshop coordinated by the project leadership team, complete a capstone project guided by fellowship mentors, and present their capstone projects. After the fellowship program concludes, the learning modules will be made publicly available as an online curriculum. This project will play a pivotal role in strengthening the library and archival workforce by providing targeted training and mentorship programs that cultivate expertise in curating oral history.