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The Country School Legacy project had its beginnings in a 1977 Historic Preservation article by Dr. Fred Schroeder of the University of Minnesota at Duluth. After describing his own experiences teaching in a small rural school, Dr. Schroeder pointed out that the general lack of documentation of such schools, their students, teachers, and curricula is a significant cultural problem. The article aroused the interest of Andrew Gulliford, a Colorado teacher, oral historian, and photographer, and he began investigating ways in which the problem might be solved - or indeed whether the problem was even as serious as Dr. Schroeder had indicated. A preliminary survey of a large number of libraries and archival repositories throughout the country amply confirmed Dr. Schroeder's conclusions, and Gulliford began serious plans for an ambitious project to collect the missing documentation and to encourage a heightened awareness and reassessment among both scholars and the general public regarding the nation's rural school heritage.
The eventual plan was to prepare a grant proposal for an eighteen-month project to be funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and sponsored by the Mountain Plains Library Association. The project would include each of the eight states covered by the Association, and competent local scholars in each of the states would do the work. Beginning in June 1980, teams of researchers collected oral histories, photographs, manuscripts, and a wide variety of other material, all of which culminated in three final products: a series of local seminars based upon attractive and intellectually challenging traveling exhibits depicting the country school heritage of the state; a final report which consisted of a narrative history of the state's rural schools; and an archival collection of materials assembled during the course of the project and placed in a designated repository within each state. The Utah State Historical Society was chosen as the official repository for the Utah Country School Legacy materials.
Jessie L. Embry, from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University, and Scott Birkenshaw, from Weber State College Library, were the two humanist scholars chosen to conduct the Utah Country School Legacy project.
At the end of the collection one will find the oral history transcripts, most of which came in with Ms. Embry's materials. The final reports, which were carefully prepared according to the guidelines provided by the Country School Legacy Executive Board, are largely self-explanatory.
Country School Legacy Project Records, 1980-1983, Utah State Historical Society.
Received from Jessie L. Embry and Scott Birkenshaw
The Country School Legacy Project Records are the physical property of the Utah Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah. Literary rights, including copyright, may belong to the authors or their heirs and assigns. Please contact the Historical Society for information regarding specific use of this collection.
Boxes 6, 7 and 8 are audio recordings (reel-to-reel and audiocassette), arranged alphabetically and are stored with tape collections.
Photographs have been removed and filed as Mss C 296.