Although there is no cost to attend the workshop, pre-registration is required because of limited seating. Register by emailing collinhistory@yahoo.com; include your name, phone number and mailing address.
Oral history is a unique way of capturing the past. Presenting history and culture on an individual, highly personal level, it helps students, researchers, and historians construct a more vivid, detailed, emotional, and human picture of our past. Oral histories can include audio recordings or videotapes, and they can be conducted by professional historians, amateur researchers, students, family members, or anyone interested in preserving a bit of the past.
Topics will include a discussion on audio versus video equipment—including details on analog video and new high-definition digital cameras—and how individuals can make use of oral histories in displays and programming so that, once recorded, they do not gather dust on a shelf.
Presented during the workshop will be a short video compilation of oral histories from the archives of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which demonstrates how a handful of amateur videotaped oral histories can be combined with film footage and still photography to create a professional documentary production—even on a tight budget.
Oral history provides a vital link with the past and enables family stories, eyewitness accounts, and interesting anecdotes to live on in the future. It is rewarding both to the interviewer, the interviewee, and to anyone who is interested in preserving their heritage.
John Versluis is the Director of the Texas Heritage Museum at Hill College in Hillsboro, Texas. He oversees three separate divisions: the Texas Heritage Museum Galleries & Collection, the Historical Research Center, and the Hill College Press. He also is an Adjunct Instructor in History at Hill College.
John, who is originally from Gunnison, Colorado, earned his BA in history at Western State College of Colorado in December 1997. John received his museum training at New Mexico State University where he earned his Master’s Degree in Public History in 2000. At NMSU he co-authored a book on Historical Architectural Styles in Las Cruces and served as a consultant for NASA in the possible nomination of Tranquility Base, the first Lunar Landing site, as a National Historic Landmark.
John served as Executive Director of the North Platte Valley Museum in Gering, Nebraska from 2000-2003. At that institution he was involved in many impressive projects including renovating that museum’s building, and establishing the Western Heritage Archive containing the world's largest collection of Overland Trail History.
John served as the Director of the Greater Southwest Historical Museum (GSHM) in Ardmore Oklahoma, from 2003-2005. At that institution he oversaw the GSHM, the Military Memorial Museum, the Carter County Genealogical Society, and a 30 acre park.
John has also worked and volunteered with many federal and state agencies such as the National Park Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Smithsonian Institution National Air & Space Museum.
Stephen Fagin is oral historian at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, where he manages an ongoing oral history project and a substantial collection of nearly 600 firsthand accounts of the life, death, and legacy of President John F. Kennedy and the history and culture of Dallas and the 1960s. This archive of living history includes the memories of assassination eyewitnesses, law enforcement officials, Parkland Hospital staff members, civil and political leaders, Kennedy family acquaintances, 1960s schoolchildren, social rights activists, historians, researchers, and filmmakers, and more than 100 members of the news media.
Since joining the museum’s staff in 2000, Stephen has had the opportunity to conduct one-on-one videotaped oral histories with such individuals such as Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Robert MacNeil, Jack Valenti, NASA astronauts Jim Lovell and Walt Cunningham, and General Chuck Yeager. Stephen also remains actively involved in the museum’s collections and exhibitions, education, and public programming initiatives. Since 2004, he has conducted over 120 educational programs, including a popular series of interactive “Living History” sessions with students, who are given the opportunity to personally question a past oral history participant.
Stephen graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Southern Methodist University in 2001 with a BA in English and history, with a departmental distinction in the latter. He has also completed his coursework for an MA in museum studies from the University of Oklahoma. He anticipates completion of his master’s thesis, a case study on The Sixth Floor Museum and its unique relationship with the Dallas community, in 2009.