A former president will promote the oral history of his time at Ohio University by holding a conversation.
Charles Ping, president of OU from 1975-1994, will talk about his presidency and the process of writing and publishing his oral history at Thursday’s Authors@Alden.
Most of the discussion will include some details from Ping’s recently-published book, A Conversation about Ohio University and the Presidency, 1975-1994, which pieces together his time as president through five separate interviews.
The discussion will take place at 7:00 p.m. on the fourth floor of Alden Library and will also be hosted by Samuel Crowl, former dean of University College and a close friend of Ping, said Gillian Berchowitz, director of OU Press.
“This (event) gave the opportunity to give everyone the sense of what the book was about in a very immediate kind of way,” Berchowitz said.
Although the original video interviews were recorded in May and June 2011, Ohio Libraries began the book’s publication in spring 2012, Berchowitz said.
To publish the book, Doug McCabe, curator of manuscripts at Archives and Special Collections, transcribed the recordings, and then Ping, Crowl and Nancy Basmajian, managing editor of OU Press, edited the transcripts for coherence, McCabe said.
“What I did there was what I had done with the Alden stuff and that was to do research about the Ping years and pick out themes,” McCabe said.
While Ping was president, OU began a collection of oral histories of its presidents, with histories of presidents emeritus John Calhoun Baker, Vernon Alden, Harry Crewson and a partial oral history of Claude Sowle, McCabe said.
“What I see with oral histories if they’re done right is to get the story behind the story, or to get the motivations behind things,” McCabe said.
This conversation will be similar to one held in November for the OU Foundation, where faculty and administrators from the Ping era were invited to celebrate the book’s publication, Berchowitz said.
“So many people made the trip to Athens for the event, and the library put on a great event,” Berchowitz said. “It was very glamorous.”
Scott Seaman, dean of OU Libraries, said he expects a large turnout for the event, both in person and through the live stream, which is where most of the audience tunes in.
“Students today, as well as people like me, benefit from the work they did 30 years ago, and how important it is to understand what our predecessors did, why they did it and the sacrifices they made to get us to where we are today,” Seaman said.
dk123111@ohiou.edu
@DanielleRose84
