Local History

Interested in collecting and telling your community’s stories? Learn more about grants and other resources that support the collection, transcription, preservation and presentation of oral histories.

Each year the Kenton County Public Library offers a popular free historic walking tour program. In this webinar, Cierra Earl will share tips and ideas on how to plan, research, and share the rich past of your community.

Do murders fascinate your patrons? Ours too! Murder & Mayhem has been a successful program at our library over the years. Gathering research from our local history collection as well as stories from our patrons, we have found a unique way to generate interest in our history, albeit a much darker side. We will discuss planning strategies, as well as the program's successes and failures, in hopes of inspiring you to bring a new adult program to your library community.

Are you interested in starting a community-based oral history project or growing the holdings of an existing oral history archive? Kentucky Historical Society Oral History Administrator Sarah Schmitt will take you through the life cycle of an oral history interview and share tips and tools for finding interviewees, conducting interviews, caring for recordings, and more.

Oral history interviews are a primary research source that can provide library users with valuable historical and family information that otherwise would be difficult or impossible to obtain. The presenters will introduce viewers to the vast breadth of oral history collections available in Kentucky, focusing on the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries, and demonstrate how these collections can be accessed by researchers and the public.