Public access to the official collection of digital interviews, which have been digitized and uploaded to the Smathers Libraries archives from the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, can be found at the UF Digital Collections
The SPOHP archive, in both digital and in physical format, is available for use by research scholars, students, journalists, genealogists, and the public. Documents may be accessed through the UF Digital Collections, as well as the Pugh Hall archive (containing physical artifacts). For access to physical research objects, please visit the offices of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program in Room 241 of Pugh Hall, or contact us by phone at 352-392-7168.
Catalog of Collections
The archives of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program’s oral history collections feature over 6,500 interviews. Our archives include interview recordings on a variety of media, including cassette tapes and digital holdings available through UF’s Smathers Libraries at the Digital Collections website, which features close to 2,000 items, and over 150,000 pages of interview transcripts.
A catalog of collections, published by SPOHP in 2004, features a sampling of project summaries and interview descriptions on the “University of Florida Samuel Proctor Oral History Program Catalog of Collections (2004)” resource, available on the UF Digital Collection website. Included collections range from the Civilian Conservation Corps, Florida Everglades Restoration, Florida Business Leaders, Florida Newspapers, and the University of Florida College of Law, College of Nursing, Fischer School of Accounting, Women’s Studies program, and Medical Center, among others.
Transcripts are written according to the SPOHP Style Guide (2016) (PDF).
Featured Collections and Ongoing Projects
Within the archives, SPOHP’s largest project focuses on Native American history, including over 900 oral history interviews archived with a variety of Native American tribes. Other major holdings include the African American History Project, Latina/o Diaspora collections, veterans history, and Mississippi Freedom Project. SPOHP also houses general sound archives, which include University of Florida-related speeches, videotapes of television interviews with Dean Rusk, William C. Westmoreland, and George McGovern, and others, Native American slides and photographs, and 350 recordings of music, including concerts, folk music, and Native American chants.
For more information about these and other projects, please contact us, and consider applying to the internship program and volunteer program to get involved in active research.
The following is a sample of SPOHP’s major active and ongoing projects.
- Addiction History Project (see press release, July 2015)
- African American History Project (AAHP)
- Appalachian Social Change Project (see press release, December 2014)
- Coalition of Immokalee Workers
- Community Organizing in America
- Everglades Jetport
- Gainesville – Fifth Avenue Blacks (with AAHP)
- Florida Business Leaders
- Florida Environment and Ecology
- Florida Elections Project
- Florida Opportunity Scholars
- Florida Ranching
- Florida Water Management
- Haitian Revolution Memories
- Immigration History in America
- Latina/o Diaspora in the Americas Project (LDAP)
- Mississippi Freedom Project (MFP)
- Ocklawaha River Project
- Poarch Creek Project (CRK) (see press release, October 2013)
- Panama Canal Museum Project
- Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
- Student Action with Farmworkers
- Tidewater Main Street for Fieldwork in Folklore (see press release, October 2014)
- Tucson Ethnic Studies (with LDAP)
- University of Florida
- United Faculty of Florida
- Veterans History Project (VHP)
- Vietnam War Veterans
- Women Activists Feminists
- World War II Veterans
For additional information, contact SPOHP, call the offices at (352) 392-7168, and connect with us online today. Photo of Génesis Lara, Brittany Hibbert, and Joanna Joseph from the Mississippi Freedom Project 2014 research trip, courtesy of SPOHP.