"Capturing these moments of history in the making through tape recorded interviews is the purpose of oral history."
Thus does Linda Wood, librarian at the South Kingston (RI) High School describe the essential value of oral history in making the recent past meaningful in her introduction to the published version of The Whole World Was Watching: an Oral history of 1968 . Wood was the coordinator of the oral history project, The Whole World Was Watching.
The interviews for the project were conducted in 1998 by twenty members of a tenth grade English class from South Kingston High School who interviewed thirty-one Rhode Island residents who related their recollections of 1968 and the impact that the events of that year had on their lives. The interviewees were asked to focus on such issues as the Vietnam War, the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, the Civil Rights struggle, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and to relate personal reminiscences of the era. Based on the interviews they conducted, the students wrote essays in which they summarized the content of the interviews and placed the comments of the interviewees in the context of the events of 1968.
The Whole World Was Watching was a joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University's Scholarly Technology Group. The project was funded by the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities and NetTech: the Northeast Regional Technology in Education Consortium. The students worked under the supervision of South Kingstown High School librarian Linda Wood and South Kingstown High School English teacher Sharon Schmid. They also received assistance and support from humanities scholars, Professor Sharon Strom of the University of Rhode Island and Professor Kate Dunnigan of the Community College of Rhode Island.
From the guide to the The Whole World Was Watching, An Oral History of 1968, 1998, (University of Rhode Island Library Special Collections and Archives Unit)
