Feb. 6, 2006 -- A public lecture, “Digital Archives, Oral History and The Civil Rights Movement” will be presented by the Heritage Studies Ph.D. Program Thursday, Feb. 9, at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.

The public lecture will be given by Dr. Douglas A. Boyd, program manager for the Kentucky Oral History Commission, a program of the Kentucky Historical Society. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 4 p.m. in the ASU Museum.

Boyd holds a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. He has served as the senior archivist for the oral history and folklife collections at the Kentucky Historical Society, where he managed an archive of over 8,000 interviews.

In addition to his public sector and academic experience, Boyd has a background in recording studio production, specializing in digital audio restoration. He has designed the Civil Rights portion of the Kentucky Oral History Project’s online digital media database. This provides easy internet access to more than 200 hours of audio content, 15 hours of video content, and at least 10,000 pages of electronic oral history transcriptions, all of which are full-text searchable.

Boyd’s interests are not limited to the technological applications of oral history, but also include the intellectual components. He has recently submitted, for publication, a completed book manuscript, which focuses on the dynamics between oral history and public memory. He has co-authored “The Stars of Ballymenone” with folklorist Henry Glassie to be published by Indiana University Press in the spring.

The lecture will be held in Room 157 of the ASU Museum.