Communications of the ACM
Eight Jfk News Conferences Now Available Online in Digital Format
President John F. Kennedy prior to delivering his address at the University of North Dakota on Sept. 25, 1963. The speech and other recordings are now available on iTunes through UND.
Credit: The University of North Dakota
Eight recordings of President John F. Kennedy's news conferences—previously unavailable in digital format—have been placed online by the University of North Dakota.
On Jan. 20, the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's inauguration, Apple iTunes will feature UND's JFK Digital Archives.
The digital collection includes eight of Kennedy's presidential news conferences held between August 1961 and February 1963, as well as the announcement of Kennedy's death made by KFJM, the public radio station on UND's campus.
Recordings of the late president, who was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, are available on iTunes through UND. They also include a speech he gave at the University on Sept. 25, 1963, as part of a five-day tour around the United States.
Curt Hanson, head of UND special collections, says tapes of Kennedy's news conferences were sent to KFJM by the White House prior to Kennedy's visit to UND. Before being converted to MP3 digital format, they were not available online.
During the news conferences, Kennedy addresses topics ranging from a nuclear test ban agreement with the Soviet Union, the Peace Corps, tax legislation, the war in Vietnam, rising steel prices and other national and global issues of the early '60s.
"This is significant because now that these recordings are in a digital form, they're available to anyone who has access to iTunes," says Wilbur Stolt, director of UND's Chester Fritz Library. "Before this, historical researchers interested in the recordings would have to contact the library or make a visit."
Audio recordings on cassette tapes, speech text and photographs of Kennedy's 1963 visit to UND were preserved in the library's special collections section. They are now available online at the University's website as the JFK Digital Archive.
"President Kennedy was killed not long after he visited UND, which made his visit here that much more significant," Stolt says.
UND's digital archive of Kennedy's visit includes transcripts of the speech he gave—both as written and as delivered. He discussed the need to preserve land for future generations through the creation of national parks. During Kennedy's one-hour visit, University President George Starcher conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on Kennedy.
In September 2008, the University marked the anniversary of JFK's visit with a conference, "John F. Kennedy History, Memory, Legacy." Gregory Gordon, associate professor of law and director of the Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies, originated the idea for the conference.
Crystal Alberts, chair of the UND working group in digital and new media, worked with the library's special collections department to create a digital archive of Kennedy's visit to UND. She supervised a group of students in her digital humanities course to create the electronic transcript of Kennedy's speech from the audio tapes in special collections. A photo gallery documenting the president's visit was also created from the library's photograph collection.
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