Session 1H | Breathing New Life into Maverick Veterans’ Voices Using Oral History Metadata Synthesizer

"University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) is the nation’s No. 1 four-year institution for veterans and their families to earn a college degree. The University serves and supports UTA veterans and their families enabling them to continue their education.

The UTA Libraries has created and published a variety of digital collections while offering worldwide access to these collections. One of these collections is Maverick Veterans’ Voices (https://library.uta.edu/mavvets/), providing access to the oral histories of veterans belonging to the UTA community. The Maverick Veterans’ Voices is a collaborative project with the UTA Libraries and the Department of History. The Department of History has long supported UTA’s rich tradition with, and connection to, the armed forces and America’s military history.

The Maverick Veterans’ Voices project was launched in 2012 to collect, share and preserve the stories of the UTA veterans. There were a total of 14 video interviews conducted between 2012 and 2015. Those video interviews were presented online, but that video content was not accessible. In 2015, the Maverick Veterans’ Voices project became an inactive project. In 2019, the UTA Libraries launched and applied the Oral History Metadata Synthesizer (OHMS) system to the Maverick Veterans’ Voices project and gave the Maverick Veterans’ Voices a new life.

This presentation will discuss the project background, reactivating processes, and project challenges.