The audio archive of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History (Nunn Center) currently contains over 8000 interviews. This website offers access to the collection’s online catalogue. The user can choose from all kinds of access: navigate through themes (subject); do a structured search on the metadata, search the catalogue via the free text box or browse through alphabetical lists of projects or interviewees. The Nunn Center offers support to groups in Kentucky interested in conducting oral history research. The oral history staff offers individuals oral history instruction or group workshops when requested. The University of Kentucky Program serves as consultant for non-University projects and also as repository for the resulting interviews.Over 300 interviews, many of which were conducted in the 1970s, are publicly available online. In order to achieve this, the Nunn Center and the UK Libraries Division of Library Technologies have created a web-based, system called OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchonizer) to inexpensively and efficiently enhance access to and discovery of oral history online. The OHMS system provides users with full-text searching on the speech transcripts and a time-correlated transcript or index connecting the textual search term to the corresponding moment in the recorded interview online.In audio as well as in video this tool helps to synchronize the spoken words with the transcript. A demonstration of the tool is online. In 2012 the Nunn Center’s OHMS system has become renowned in the US for the digitization, processing and online hosting of oral history collections.The blog Saving Stories is a marketing tool for this AV-archive.
The OHMS system is a nice example of how an AV-archive can assist the user group this cultural heritage institute is focussed on: “historical researchers”.