Underground Rhode Island

A collection of oral histories and supporting materials about the arts in 20th c. Rhode Island. These materials formed part of an exhibit, and continued to grow as a digital collection.

In the spring semester of 2004, the students in Paul Buhle’s oral history class investigated the arts in 20th c. RI. The interviews and supporting materials they collected provided the raw materials for an exhibit at the Providence Historical Society, and later at the Newport Jazz Festival. The corpus of oral histories, now called Underground Rhode Island, will continue to grow each year as successive oral history classes interview members of the RI arts communities.

Using two years of oral histories as well as materials from the exhibits, STG created a digital version of Underground Rhode Island. Working with Paul Buhle’s students, we digitized the oral histories, transcripts and visual material that had been collected, catalogued it and made it accessible through a website. This project is also an exemplary collaboration between the library’s Center for Digital Initiatives and STG, as all the primary source data is stored in the CDI’s digital repository. Finally, we worked with the students to systematize and document the production of the interviews and transcriptions for future classes, to facilitate their inclusion in the database.

Underground Rhode Island is a project of American Civilization

Contributors to this project include Kerri Hicks (STG), Paul Buhle (Faculty lead)