Patrick County [Virginia] Oral History Project Records

Sponsored by the Blue Ridge Regional Library and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to explore the theme of "Continuity and Change in a Rural Community." It was conducted between September 1980 and August 1982. The project began by presenting a series of folklife programs on local traditions of music, dance, verbal art, history, and material culture; continued by collecting and transcribing taped oral histories of families and communities, building a collection of photographs of the county's past and present, and expanding the public branch library's and the University library's collections in regional literature, folk culture, and history; and then combining these activities as resources for producing a series of public programs which pursued the basic theme of "continuity and change" in this rural Southwest Virginia county.