WISCONSIN VETERANS MUSEUM PUTS ORAL HISTORY RECORDINGS ONLINE

April 19, 2016

MADISON, Wis. (April 19, 2016) – For the first time, visitors of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum website can go to the oral history section to listen to interviews recorded with local veterans. The museum is enhancing access to oral history online by incorporating the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) program.

OHMS is an open source, web-based application designed to enhance access to recorded oral histories.
The incorporation of the OHMS program will also allow users to quickly search and find information from the recorded interviews.

“This technology is robust. We’ll be using it to increase access to some of the interviews in our Oral History Collection,” said Michael Telzrow, Wisconsin Veterans Museum Director. “This program will provide visitors a more direct connection to the stories of Wisconsin veterans and a deeper appreciation for their significant contributions to American military history.”

In coordination with the WAR:RAW exhibit, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum interviewed seven of the artists participating in the expressive art therapy program and featured in the exhibit. These interviews are now available online and will be posted as part of the initial launch. This autumn, the museum plans to post online interviews with younger veterans who served in Operations Enduring Freedom (October 2001 – December 2014) and Iraqi Freedom (March – May 2003).

In 2017, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum plans to add interviews with World War I veterans to mark the centennial of American involvement in that war.

ABOUT OHMS
The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries created a web-based system called OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer) to inexpensively and efficiently enhance access to oral history online. OHMS provides users word-level search capability and a time-correlated transcript or indexed interview connecting the textual search term to the corresponding moment in the recorded interview online. The primary purpose for OHMS is to empower users to more effectively and efficiently discover information in an online oral history. OHMS is an open source, web-based application designed to improve the user experience.

ABOUT THE WISCONSIN VETERANS MUSEUM
The Wisconsin Veterans Museum is an educational activity of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs created to commemorate, acknowledge, and affirm the role of Wisconsin citizens in American military history, past and present. Located at 30 W. Mifflin St., Madison, WI, the museum is home to more than 3,000 historical objects that tell the stories of local veterans through displays from the Civil War to the War On Terror.