The State Historical Society of Missouri's Oral History Program is actively producing and collecting interviews and audio recordings pertaining to a broad range of Missouri culture and history. Over the years, a large number of important audio recordings have been collected by the State Historical Society of Missouri, and through the activities of the four branches of its joint collection, the University of Missouri Western Historical Manuscript Collection at Columbia, St. Louis, Kansas City and Rolla. These audio materials include a wide variety of spoken recollections, political speeches, scholarly lectures, public discussions, meeting and convention proceedings, folksong and musical performances, and more. Thanks to initiatives generously supported by the Missouri General Assembly, the State Historical Society is able to place a full-time oral historian in the field.

The Society's Oral History Program has been active since the fall of 1993. The first significant project focused upon artists of Missouri's Bootheel region. The Bootheel Project, supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Missouri Arts Council, and conducted in cooperation with the University of Missouri Folk Arts Program and Museum of Art and Archaeology, enlisted the efforts of a team of professional and student researchers. In 1994, the research team collected 137 audio cassette recordings of interviews and performances, approximately 2,000 individual black/white photographic images, and over 1200 color slides. The results of this project are summarized in a publication released in June of 1995, Art and Heritage of the Missouri Bootheel: A Resource Guide, compiled and edited by Ray Brassieur and Deborah Bailey.

A major, ongoing project is the Politics in Missouri Oral History Project, which began in January 1996. The project is a growing resource of interviews with former and current legislators, lobbyists, governors, and other political participants. In general, mid- and late-twentieth century Missouri political history remains an under-studied field, and this project helps address this void by making a large new resource available to the scholarly community and the public. The collection seeks to represent the widest possible variety of personal and professional backgrounds and political orientations.

The Program's latest undertaking is the Missouri Ex-POWs Oral History Project, the purpose of which is to document, preserve, and honor the personal histories of the state's ex-prisoners of war. Since the summer of 2000, numerous Missouri chapter members of the American Ex-Prisoners of War (AX-POW) have been interviewed. All of the interviewees to date were prisoners of either the Germans or the Japanese during World War II. The project recently joined forces with the Veterans History Project, a national enterprise sponsored by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

The Missouri Environment Oral History Project is another ongoing project conducted by the State Historical Society of Missouri. The project, which began in 1997, seeks to document the history of conservation, preservation, environmentalism, land and natural resource use in Missouri. Topics and issues addressed include [or will include] forestry, wildlife management, minerals extraction, waterways issues, and environmental politics.

In addition to actively producing and collecting oral history recordings from throughout Missouri, the Oral History Program shares collected materials with scholarly and popular audiences through lectures, public discussions, workshops, exhibitions, and publications. The Program also seeks to interact with Missouri collectors and established collections of oral history and sound recordings in order to promote the sharing of information about ongoing projects and educational opportunities in the state. Anyone interested in the Oral History Program is encouraged to contact the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at (573) 882-0417, corriganj@umsystem.edu or write:

Jeff D. Corrigan
SHS Oral History Program
Western Historical Manuscript Collection
23 Ellis Library
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65201-5149