The Entrepreneurship (ENT) Division's Oral History project will contribute primary source accounts of events and activities that were foundational to the establishment of our division almost 40 years ago, from individuals who were there at the time, and with their own voices. It will promote understanding of the historical development of the entrepreneurship field for scholars in general and help preserve institutional knowledge for ENT division members in particular. As division historian, I have directed this project since early 2023 with the help of my committee (Gianpaolo Abatecola, Susan Coombes, Dimo Dimov, Luisa Guimarães, Dan Wadhwani) and also in coordination with my ENT executive committee colleagues. Everything is right on schedule. Here is a brief update for the division.
In 2023, I hired two historians (Jessica Roseberry, Ellen Brooks) with oral history research expertise, sourced from the Oral History Association. The historians completed 25 interviews and submitted the video and audio recordings in December 2024. The interviews are candid conversations. They range from one hour to over two hours in length and are full of interesting content about the development of our field and our division.
Right now, we are curating the video files for inclusion in a permanent digital collection at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's (UAB) library. I have been collaborating with Assistant Professor Britney Murphy in UAB's Department of History and six of her students (Elizabeth Albrecht, Eli Baggett, Patrick Henckell, Miguel Luna, Donna Morris, and Sam Wise) to transcribe the interviews. The video recording software used by the two historians produced AI-generated audio transcriptions, but those transcriptions naturally contained errors that the six history students are finding and correcting by reviewing all the videos. Each file is examined twice: one student corrects the transcription, and then another student checks the first student's edits. As of late June 2025, this phase is about 90% complete.
Next, in coordination with UAB Librarian Kasia Gonnerman and Resource Librarians Kara Van Abel and Luke Menzies, a digital curation team will transfer the files and materials, in proper format, to a special online collection with complete reference information regarding sourcing, legal aspects, and the various contents (e.g., transcription text files). The entire collection will eventually be open access and available to anyone for research, use in doctoral seminars, or for general interest. I plan to finish the digital curation process by the end of 2025 and expect the oral history collection to be fully available in 2026. I wish to thank everyone referenced above for their support and for making this project possible. If any division members have questions, then please contact me anytime. See you in Copenhagen!