National Oral History Project Interviews Dr. Bill Mears

Capturing the stories of retired librarians has been one of the 2007/2008 presidential initiatives for American Library Association President, Dr. Loriene Roy and one of the first librarians to participate is retired Alkek Library director, Dr. Bill Mears. Dr. Mears tells his story to  Stephanie Langenkamp who also worked at Alkek at one time, and is currently the director of the San Marcos Public Library.

Life histories will be collected by volunteers at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim June 26-July 2, 2008. The purpose of the project is to capture librarians at the end of their careers. Their experiences are being made accessible to library school students, new librarians, and colleagues via the project website. It may also be of interest to anyone who has an interest in librarianship, oral history projects, or digital libraries.

The platform used by the project allows the user to watch the interview, download the transcript, or both using Glifos. Here is a link to the PDF documentation about the digital library platform.  The UT iSchool and Harry Ransom Center has also collected and digitized the Mike Wallace Interviews using this same MediaWiki-based system.

To watch Dr. Mears' interesting interview about how he became a librarian, the experience he went through during the construction of the new library building, and other challenges he has faced since retiring from Texas State University,  click here.

You can also check the Project website after the ALA annual conference for more interviews.