Reel-to-reel Recordings on CD-ROM

During the last several years the College Archives has been sending reel-to-reel recordings of speaker presentations at the College to Safe Sound, a company specializing in media migration. The Richard R. Hallock Foundation provided a grant for the project in 2008-09. Additional funds were drawn from a special endowment, the Hunt Preservation Fund, established in 2007 to enable the Oberlin College Archives to undertake preservation, conservation and digital access projects for artworks, recordings, photographs, and other objects in need of treatment, stabilization and/or migration to new media. In 2008-09, recordings of 115 events spanning 1958 to 1983 were copied to 131 CDs for user access. See the Office of Communications (RG 18) finding guide for an inventory of the titles and dates of these recorded presentations.

In 2010 the following recorded speakers and events were transferred, and are now available for research:

Affirmative Action (panel, 1983)
Anti-Apartheid Events (1987)
Judith Becker (1975)
Ann Binyon (1978)
Marilyn Horne (interview, 1978)
William P. Malm (1975)
Oberlin and Black Education (panel, 1982)
Oberlin at Wooster (football game, 1996)
Donald J. Pease (interview, 1971)
Gloria Steinem (1982)

Recorded speakers and events transferred in 2008-09, now available for research:

Allen Memorial Art Museum, Venturi Addition Dedication
Alumni Sesquicentennial Symposium
J. Barbash
Max Beloff
Arthur Berger
Wendell Berry
Herbert Blau
Geoffrey Blodgett
Mario di Bonaventura
Julian Bond
Andrew Bongiorno
Jimmy Breslin
Robert McAfee Brown
John Cage
Robert K. Carr
Cesar Chavez
Shirley Chisholm
Kenneth B. Clark
Ramsey Clark
Kathleen (Eldridge) Cleaver
William Sloan Coffin, Jr.
Commencement Symposium on Student Unrest
Barry Commoner
Angela Davis
Education Commission Special Assembly
Education Facilities Laboratories Conference
Ralph Ellison
John Fischer
Donald Fleming
Betty Friedan
Milton Friedman
Robert W. Fuller
John Kenneth Galbraith
Harry Golden
Nathan Greenburg
Michael Harrington
Alex Haley
August Heckscher
Robert Heilbroner
Walter Heller
Melville Herskovits
Clyde Holbrook
Sidney Hook
Jesse Jackson
Selma James
Ellen H. E. Johnson
John F. Kennedy Memorial Service
King Building Dedication
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Service
Henry A. Kissinger
John W. Kurtz
Max Lerner
Edward L. Long
David Love
Donald M. Love
Allard Lowenstein
Samuel Lubell
Roy Lucas
Staughton Lynd
George S. May
Rollo May
Albert J. McQueen
Margaret Mead
Robert K. Merton
N. Scott Momaday
C. Wright Morris
Toni Morrison
Wayne Morse
Mudd Library Groundbreaking
Ralph Nader
Philleo Nash
Robert E. Neil
Richard Neustadt
Michael Novak
Claes Oldenburg
Rich Orloff
Lucian Pye
Edwin O. Reischauer
Vinio Rossi
Harrison Salisbury
Andrew Sarris
Richard Schoonmaker
Robert Shaw
Thomas Sherman
Gary Snyder
Wolfgang Stechow
Wallace E. Stegner
William E. Stevenson
Ronald Suny
Janet McKelvey Swift
Robert Tufts
Stewart Udall
Vietnam Assembly & Moratorium Panel
Robert Weaver
Robert Weinstock
Tom Wicker
Roy Wilkins
Harrison A. Williams Jr.
Olly W. Wilson, Jr.
Minoru Yamasaki
David P. Young

At Oberlin's 132nd graduation exercises (1965), Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the Commencement Address and received an honorary doctorate.

John Cage spoke on "James Joyce, Marcel Duchamps and Erik Satie: An Alphabet" on April 16th, 1983.

Margaret Mead gave the Assembly talk "The Role of the College-Educated Woman in Today's Society" on October 10th, 1963.

Oberlin Professor Wolfgang Stechow spoke on "Humanities and Science: Cold War or Alliance?" on May 17th, 1962.

Photographs from the collections of the Oberlin College Archives; all rights reserved.