Funding for the Behind the Veil digital collection was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and took place from 2021-2024. The collection digitization began with reprocessing the archival collection in it's entirety after a number of additions were made from the collection's initial deposit in the John Hope Franklin Research Center in 1996. During the reprocessing, the collection was organized into two series - Interviews and Associated Materials 1881-2004, bulk 1993-1995 and Behind the Veil Project Records, circa 1864-2004, bulk 1990-2004.
Recordings in the collection were digitized by an outside vendor, while the remainder of the collection was digitized by the Duke Libraries' Digital Production Center. A team of library experts worked collaboratively to manage ingest of the digital materials into the Duke Digital Repository (DDR). The DDR is the home for all of the library's digital collections and Behind the Veil's collection contains over 4,200 items.
Researchers have the ability to search within the collection using the search box at the top of the collection page for any term within the metadata matrix (see Metadata Application section of this guide for more details). The project's interviews, photographs, video recordings, administrative and project records are in the collection. Here are some tips for research and use -
Playing and Downloading Interviews - Researchers have the ability to listen and skip around an interview by using the interview player. Users are able to download and save interviews to your personal machine (Photographs and videos are also able to be downloaded using the same button). In the example below, the interview was done in three parts, be aware to start on part one to hear from the beginning of the conversation. -
Transcripts - Each interview also has a transcription that allows researchers to identify the speakers and follow the conversation text in real listening time. The transcript is also downloadable -
Related Materials - In the reprocessing of the archive, project materials were organized under the name of creator of the interview (ie, the person(s) who sat for the interview) to be related to each other. When researching or browsing through the collection be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page to find additional materials.Alien St. Julien has a photographic slide in the Behind the Veil digital collection -
By scrolling to the bottom of the page, you can also access related items to the slide from the creator, including the administrative file, oral history interview and additional slides/photographs
