With generous support from the family and friends of the late Mary Laird Silvia, a benefactor of scholarship at Hagley, the library has created the Hagley Oral History Project Office. Gregory Hargreaves is its first manager. Mary Laird Silvia had undertaken oral histories of the residents at and around Hagley and Rockland, donating them to the library’s collections. It is therefore very appropriate that the seed funding for this new effort be made in her honor.
The Oral History Project Office is the latest development in testing and establishing an ongoing oral history capacity at Hagley. Hagley is no stranger to oral history collections. In the first decades of Hagley’s existence, oral histories were taken with former DuPont Company powder yard workers and their families as part of Hagley’s efforts to historically interpret its site. Then, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Hagley embarked on an ambitious oral history documentary project supported by the Longwood Foundation, “A Separate Place: The African American Schools P.S. du Pont Built” (2001), which circulated widely around the state and generated the subsequent “Conversations Series on African American History.” Last summer, the library launched an oral history series documenting the development of Kevlar at the DuPont Company, which have been produced and will be available online shortly.
Along with electronic records preservation, oral history has become increasingly important in recent years as a means for documenting the historical development of businesses and business organizations. Businesses that are current or potential depositors of collections at Hagley have expressed to us their interest in supporting oral history projects that will do just that. As the library broadens its engagement with current and new depositors, oral history will become an important element in these developing relationships.
Gregory Hargreaves holds a masters degree in history from the University of Delaware, where he was a fellow in the UD-Hagley Program in the History of Industrialization. As the 2014-15 public history intern in Hagley’s Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, Greg launched theStories from the Stacks podcast series, featuring interviews with scholars using the library’s collections.
With training in American industrial history as well as years of experience in radio, he is uniquely suited to develop and manage Hagley’s neophyte oral history program. We look forward to working with Greg.
Erik Rau is Director, Library Services at Hagley.