Gary here. As a native and proud Chicagoan (I sure could go for a “Chicago Style” hot dog about now), the name and work of Studs Terkel are a part of what Chicago is all about or as some might say, “it’s part of of the fabric of the city.”
So, for every Chicagoan and their memories (just about everyone has one) of Studs, it’s very exciting to read in the Chicago Tribune that an archive of radio interviews that Terkel conducted will soon begin being digitization process and then made available online.
The opportunity to do this comes from a deal worked out between the Chicago History Museum (my hometown) and the Library of Congress (just a few miles from where currently live).
If someone was an important figure in American culture in the 20th century, chances are he or she was interviewed by Studs Terkel.
Conversations with Rosa Parks, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King Jr. and Louis Armstrong are among the nearly 6,000 hours of interviews conducted by Mr. Terkel, the colorful*** Chicago author and oral historian, for WFMT radio from 1952 to 1997.
Under a deal signed Monday between the Chicago History Museum and the Library of Congress, tapes of those interviews will be digitally preserved and given new life online.
The Library of Congress will digitize the Studs Terkel Oral History Archive, according to the agreement, while the museum will retain ownership of the roughly 5,500 interviews in the archive and the copyrights to the content.
Project officials expect digitizing the collection to take more than two years.
See Also: Entry for Terkel in the Encyclopedia of Chicago
The encyclopedia is full text free and comes from the Chicago History Museum, The Newberry Library and Northwestern U.
*** At one time WFMT’s program guide was the back part of Chicago magazine. Not only did it list what symphony or opera would air at what time but it also listed station management. Studs Terkel was listed. His title, “free spirit.”
