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SPECIAL COLLECTIONS NEWS
&
PRESS, |
| Archive of News, Press Releases and Published Works |
| May 2009 |
| Special Collections hosted the guest lecture of Dr. Donald G. Davis, Professor Emeritus, University of Texas, Austin who spoke about the 1907 American Library Association conference that was held in Asheville. His talk, "'To Buncombe Hall, Welcome All': The 1907 Asheville Conference of the American Library Association," traced the events associated with the gathering. Some 450 leaders in the library field wrestled with the emerging issues of the day and explored "the use of books" and "libraries in the south", two major themes of the conference. The many social events that were planned for the conference attendees were highlighted in a small exhibit immediately outside Special Collections. The exhibit detailed the major monuments in Asheville in 1907 and the biographies of many of the ALA participants. A panel discussion followed the lecture. The panelists included Ed Sheary, Buncombe County Library; Mark Pumphrey, Polk County library; Bryan Sinclair, Public Services Head, Ramsey Library UNCA; Helen Wykle, Special Collections Librarian, UNCA; and a librarian researcher, Annette Brown, who had prepared an extensive bibliography on the topic of the 1907 conference. We were honored to have Dr. James Hutson, Chief of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress join us for the event and to also participate on the panel discussion following Dr. Davis's talk. Members of western North Carolina's library community, interested historians, and the general public sampled our "Lady Baltimore" cake, a 1907 specialty, during the reception following the lecture. |
| April 2009 |
| Special Collections cooperated with Black Mountain College
Museum and Arts Center to prepare a cooperative contract that
will bring the collections of the museum to UNC Asheville where they
will be processed, digitized and stored for easy access by the
museum and a number of academic programs on campus. Processing is
expected to begin on the collections in late June.
Deann Brame, a student Collections Assistant and a sophmore, who has worked diligently on the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville [HACA] records, completed a significant number of full-text digital records [see "Publications"]. Her work brought the material to the attention of not only local users, but to national users, as well. The volume of full-text publications available to those engaging in the study of urban renewal in this unique southern city, will be well rewarded by her extensive and careful work on this collection. |
| March 2009 |
| Processing is completed on a large collection of photographs from the Oteen Hospital taken during the years just following WWI. The Mrs. Walter L. Massie Collection of Jesse Morris Photographs of Oteen Hospital is an extraordinary body of photographs that vividly captures life at the hospital and the work of the many medical personnel who served the war effort. |
| February 2009 |
| Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, author of Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It and a research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute and a professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University, visited Special Collections with her husband Dr. Robert Fullilove, Ed. D., Associate Dean for Community and Minority Affairs and Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of PUblic Health of Columbia University. With Dr. Sarah Judson, the Fulliloves reviewed the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville Records held by the university. Their visit preceded a series of community lectures and events that focused on the social and psychological impact of urban renewal on the city of Asheville, NC. |
| Special Collections hosted the Carolina Mountain Club on February 26. Organized by Becky Smucker, the current President of the Club, the event featured a talk by the Club's historian, Peter Steurer and brief presentations by students and the Special Collections Coordinator, brought the Club members up to date on the management of the Club's archive. Approximately 25 members were present for the event on Thursday evening. Peter Steurer presented UNCA with additions to the archive including unique early photographs from William Tennent that provide a valuable visual record of the Club's activities in the 1940's and 1950's. In addition to the photographs, the donation included personal correspondence, pamphlets, Let's Go newsletters, and other Club documents. |
| D.H. Ramsey Library Reference and Special Collections initiate a Brown Bag Talk series that features UNCA faculty publications. The informal noon-time offerings will provide authors the opportunity to discuss their publications and to highlight their creative work. The series was opened by Holly Iglesias who read from her recently published book of poetry, Souvenirs of a Shrunken World. Holly was the 2008 winner of the 2008 Kore Press First Book Award. She is a poet and translator and teaches in the UNCA MLA program. She was followed by Chuck Bennett who discussed the publication process for his college physics text, College Physics (with PhysicsNow). See the press release: UNC Asheville's Ramsey Library Hosts Talks by Faculty Authors |
| January 2009 - |
| Special Collections gets a new face-lift. The re-design of the web-site began in late December and is currently underway. It is anticipated that the new design will provide users a more effective and efficient access to our collections. The work of Brian Stanley, a volunteer and a temporary wage non-student worker, and our student staff who have contributed their skills and critical eye to the process of re-design, is at the heart of this major over-haul. Through Brian's efforts and those of our very competent student staff we have brought on-board new systems and work-flows to help us to manage our data and the web pages that threatened to overwhelm our web site --- some 1 terabyte of data. Brian Stanley's work with us was in conjunction with his studies in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois - Urban Champaign. He will graduate in June of this year. |
| Mark Bennet, journalist and fine arts restorer and master of several other trades, contacted Special Collections with an offer to make available his complete publications from the The Biltmore Beacon Newspaper , a local newspaper published for Biltmore Village and the Asheville community. His virtual donation of historical articles will give contextual depth to many of our local and regional historical collections. We are grateful to his generosity and to The Mountaineer Publishing Company for granting permission to reproduce his articles in their entirety in the Mark Bennet Collection. |
| Together We Read and Special Collections jointly sponsored a gathering of western North Carolina Library Directors at UNCA. The joint meeting discussed the importance of the Together We Read programming to the western region and to the literacy of the region. A framework was established for cooperation between libraries to continue to support the popular reading program begun by Rob Neufeld and carried forward by various libraries in the western NC area. |
| November 2008 |
| November marked the end of a long, 11 year partnership with volunteer Margaret Mitchell. Margaret, a retired librarian came to Special Collections in 1998 when the unit was just beginning the process of digitization and elected to tackle the cataloging of the E.M. Ball Photographic Collection. She cheerfully began the arduous task of documenting and creating metadata for the Ball Collection, one of our largest photograph holdings (some 10,000 images). The prospect of creating individual records for each of the images in the collection was staggering. While a volunteer in Special Collections, Margaret generally worked one day a week for approximately 6 hours and these hours were wisely used. She completed the project of documenting the Ball Collection in record time if all those hours could be aggregated. She researched where necessary, checked bibliographic references, and provided metadata for well over 9,000 discreet items in the Ball holdings. Her work has been central to discovery of new information in this heavily used collection. Further, she has provided expert researched information on a collection that was largely identified only by a brief title sometimes supplied by the photographer and sometime provided by the staff of the Southern Highlands Research Center, the predecessor of Special Collections. Her efforts were at the core of a 2006 LSTA grant that explored Asheville's Built Environment and the grant could not have been completed without her expert work. UNCA Special Collections will remain forever indebted to her diligent, intelligent, and sustained efforts on this key collection and the community of users of these images will long benefit from her dedication to this collection and to them. |
| October 2007 |
| HOUSING AUTHORITY RECORDS TRANSFERRED FROM THE CITY OF ASHEVILLE. The Housing Authority of the City of Asheville Records were transferred to Special Collections by an act of the City Council on October 16, 2007. This major acquisition consists of nearly 130 linear feet (129 cartons) of administrative records for Asheville’s Redevelopment Commission dating from around 1958 to 1970, as well as the official records of Asheville’s Housing Authority from the late 1940s to the 1990s. The records in this collection pertain primarily to several significant redevelopment projects undertaken by Asheville from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. Also represented to a lesser extent are smaller development and redevelopment projects, as well as several housing projects and bridge projects. |
| September 2007 |
| The September edition of WNC Magazine: Mountain Living in Western North Carolina, contains a feature article by Suzanne Smith, "Homegrown Heritage," that uses the early photographs of tobacco farming and processing contained in the E.M. Ball Photographic Collection. The photographs capture the life of the mountain burley tobacco farmer and the article gives those photographs their historical context. The article characterizes the farmers as they grow, harvest, and take to market this once dominant cash crop of the mountains. |
| Nan Chase's book about Asheville, NC, simply titled, Asheville: A History, is now released for sale. The paperback book published by McFarland & Co., Inc., here in North Carolina, is one of the first books to thoughtfully analyze the growth, decline, and rejuvenation of the remarkably resilient city in Buncombe County. The book is richly illustrated with photographs from Special Collections and deeply researched in the documents and oral histories found in Special Collections. Over thirty oral histories from the collections were consulted for her edgy publication that explores many of the cities darker days and personalities. It also traces the enormous philanthropic energy of the of the city that continues to be a hall-mark of the sustainable impetus that runs through its history. Three copies have been purchased for the library. One has been placed in Special Collections and joins the growing body of "Asheville" book authors, including Mitzi Tessier, Milton Ready, David Coleman Bailey, Lou Harshaw, and others. Two copies of the new title have been placed in the General Collections for circulation and one in Special Collections. |
| August 2007 |
| One of the most remarkable donations of photographs we have received in some time, came to us via an anonymous donor. Called the East Riverside Photographs, this collection of early Asheville, NC, documents turn-of-the-century life in the African American community of East Riverside, in the area down near the French Broad River on the east-side of the city. Most of the items in the collection are not necessarily related to one another, and represent discarded items from homes in the area gathered during the urban renewal process that occurred in the late 1970's and early 1980's and later. The photographs of residents of the East Riverside area are striking in their dignity, range of residents, and graphic illustration of a way of life in East Riverside. Most are unidentified and identification is invited. |
| July 2007 |
| Discussion and preliminary planning began on the transfer of the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville Records to Special Collections. |
| March 2007 |
| The Premier issue of WNC Magazine:Mountain Living in Western North Carolina, contains account of the 'Highland Messenger' newspaper recently donated to UNCA in November 2006 by Richard and Julia Richards. The newest periodical to appear on the news shelves of western North Carolina, is an attractive addition to the popular magazine market. This inaugural issue contains an article by Nan Chase that describes the 'Highland Messenger' newspaper recently acquired from Julia and Dick Richards of Swannanoa, NC. Nan Chase, a local author who has worked extensively with the UNCA Special Collections on her upcoming book on the city of Asheville, is also the author of a feature article in this new periodical on the Chimney Rock park sale to the state of North Carolina. |
| ZIONIST SOCIETY OF ASHEVILLE. The history of the Zionist Society of Asheville was discovered in the donation of a small notebook which contained the organization's Constitution and By-laws. This single donated item, though scant in information provided information about a very little known organization in Asheville. |
| PAUL BREZNEY PHOTOGRAPHS |
| Discussion began this month on the donation of the photographs of Paul Brezney. A long-time resident of Asheville, Brezney was employed as a commercial photographer and over the course of nearly four decades he documented the many businesses, people, activities, events and other culturally significant views of Asheville, NC. His significant collection chronologically and thematically continues the work found in the E.M. Ball Photographic Collection which largely ends in the late 1960's. |
| January 2007 |
| December 2006 |
| WALTER ASHE COLLECTION |
| A third outstanding collection of material was received from Walter Ashe, a resident of Asheville, who assembled the archive of the various USS Ashevilles. The Walter Ashe Collection is a history of the several ships named for the city of Asheville, as well as a record of dedication to our soldiers who fought in WWII. The new body of material contains memorabilia, letters of correspondence, celebrations regarding the ships, and starts with the earliest commissioned ship of 1920 and continues with the commissioning of the USS ASHEVILLE SSN758, a nuclear submarine. Together these materials form a remarkable history of Naval support vessels and their Asheville connection. The various letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, and an oral history taken from Mr. Ashe, three large scrapbooks that detail the activity of Walter Ashe in the South China Sea in WWII and the celebration of the Asheville vessels, by the crew, the city of Asheville and the US Navy, is filled with rich detail. The most recent donation of an additional three scrapbooks, completes the history of the Asheville vessels with a complete accounting from the first commissioning to the deployment of the nuclear submarine, the USS ASHEVILLE SSN758. A small body of this material is now online and additional material will be added as it is processed. The China I and China II scrapbooks were processed through a cooperative internship arranged through the UNCA History department. Mark Holland, a senior history major completed the work on these two scrapbooks. |
| December 2006 |
| ARVAL WOODY, CHAIR MAKER |
A second collection of material,
Arval Woody, Chair Maker , is a unique record through letters,
photographs, and magazine and newspaper clippings, of a family of
craftsmen who crafted chairs and other wood products in their
workshop located in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The papers of Arval
Woody describe the five generations who participated in the crafting
of chairs. In his own words he describes the shop:
Arval Woody, born near Spruce Pine in 1920 is the last of the Woody's to produce chairs and the recent announcement that the shop will close, brings an end to an extraordinary family history of craft and love of wood. A video of the workshop and of Arval at work is planned for the Spring of 2007, to capture the unique series of tools and techniques that the Woody's used to create thousands of chairs that have brought joy to many households, including that of President John F. Kennedy. |
| December 2006 |
| JAMES HAMILTON TWEED FAMILY COLLECTION |
| We also had a very busy acquisition period. The most notable new collection, the James Hamilton Tweed Family Collection, is virtual collection of photographs, letters, and deeds provided by the Thomas Tweed family and by the current owner of the Tweed farm in the Cane Creek Valley region of Buncombe County. The Tweeds established residency in the Cane Creek valley early in the nineteenth century, following the path taken by many European immigrants to the rapidly developing frontier. Thomas Tweed and Jane Henry Tweed emigrated from Ireland to America around 1819, landing at the Charleston, South Carolina port. After brief sojourns in South Carolina and possibly other locations, the couple settled in the Cane Creek area where they had several children. Only one child, Samuel, married, according to notes in the family bible. Samuel married Jane Hamilton, of South Carolina and they had nine children. It is this family legacy that shapes the material found in this collection. Included are photographs, legal documents, deeds, letters, and ephemera. The collection is a "virtual collection" because, at present, the materials in this collection are retained by various family members and the digital surrogates are shared with those who have an interest in the early history of Buncombe County, pioneer settlement, westward expansion, farming practice, immigration, and a myriad of other early nineteenth century interests. |
| December 2006 |
| NEW SHELVING RFQ! |
| Late November and early December were very busy weeks for Special Collections as we prepared an RFQ for new collection shelving and completed our inventory of un-cataloged and duplicate monographs. |
| November 2006 |
| CIVIL WAR MEMOIR AND EARLY (1841) ASHEVILLE NEWSPAPER |
| In October Julia and Richard contacted Helen Wykle at the
D.H. Ramsey Library and following a delicious dinner with the
Richards at their Swannanoa Valley home, they presented UNCA two
items of remarkable interest which became the core of the
Julia and
Richard Richards Collection.
The first to these donations was a small book of memoirs of Emma Lydia Rankin, a Caldwell County resident, who was born July 29,1838 and died February 28,1908 in Lenoir, in Caldwell County. The memoir recounts the life and family of Emma Lydia Rankin and in a vivid narrative, the experiences of the family in 1885, at the end of the Civil War as they struggled with hostile troops and privation. Emma Lydia Rankin was well-known as the Principal of the Kirkwood Home School for Girls near Lenoir, McDowell County, NC. The second donation is a fragment of the Highland Messenger newspaper, vol. II, issue 15, 1841, a Whig paper that sought to provide news to the people of western North Carolina. It had a short run from 1840 until 1848 [?] when the last issue is recorded and it was succeeded by the Asheville Messenger, which persisted until 1852. The condition of the fragment is exceptional for its age. D.H. Ramsey Library and Special Collections removed the newspaper from its original frame and had it re-framed under museum quality UV glass and mounted on a small table where it may be viewed by users of the library. It is next to the current newspaper collections and provides our users with a comparative work, possibly one of the first newspapers printed in Asheville. |
| October 2006 |
| JEFFERSON DAVIS AND BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY IN BUNCOMBE COUNTY AND WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA |
| As strange as this title may appear, it records a significant new addition to the holdings of D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections. Jefferson Davis, a local photographer, worked for many years with the federal project known as CETA (Civilian Employment and Training Act). During that time he took hundreds of photographs of Asheville's industries at work. He recorded CETA workers as they trained and the labor skills they learned. The Jefferson Davis Photograph Collection is one of the richest visual collections of Buncombe and surrounding counties, as they engaged in the development of industrial jobs. Many of these industries are now no longer in operation, but the photographs leave a comprehensive record of the activity that occurred in these businesses. This collection complements an earlier body of work, the Asheville Area Photographic Collection, that was a 1976 survey of the city of Asheville, North Carolina that focused on areas targeted for demolition and change. It recorded people at work, occupations that are unusual and disappearing, area homes, street scapes, and portraits of many individuals also included in the Southern Highlands Research Center Oral History project. |
| October, 2006 announcement |
| YWCA NC HUMANITIES GRANT |
| Efforts to enhance the "Save Our History" grant and to re-work
the grant proposal by the YWCA were initiated during the late summer
months and the new grant was submitted to the NC Humanities Council
for funding. This effort was successful and resulted in the award of
a $10,000 grant to the YWCA, and to the YMI and UNCA as partners in
the grant. The new grant proposes to develop information related to
the Asheville YWCA Archive into an exhibit to celebrate the long
history of the YWCA and to collect oral histories related to the
early history of the Asheville YWCA to be used in August of 2007 for
the Centennial Celebration of the YWCA.
Holly Jones, Director of the YWCA and Asheville City Council member will be the principle for the grant. UNCA will provide processing support through student interns and volunteers to make YWCA material available online. Dr. Sarah Judson, department of History and Dr. Kathie Garbe, new faculty in the Health and Wellness department, will provide research and consultation assistance on the project. Dr. Judson's focus on African American studies and her work with Atlanta's civil rights and civic health movements and with African American women's public health work in early twentieth century Atlanta, will inform the research conducted within the Asheville YWCA archive. Dr. Grabe, who holds a doctorate in health studies from Texas Woman’s University, is a certified health education specialist, whose research interests include older adult wellness and health behavioral change. She is also experienced in oral history collection and will assist the process of gathering histories from members, staff and former administrators of the Asheville YWCA. |
| July 31 - August 11, 2006 |
| GEORGE W. PACK EXHIBITION - "A Name That Will Endure" |
| In collaboration with the Pack Square Conservancy, D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections will mount an exhibition that celebrates the 100 years from death of Pack to 2006. The exhibition, George W. Pack: A Name That Will Endure, will provide background information on the life of George W. Pack, his donation of land for the current Pack Square, and other Asheville monuments, as well as information on the development of the new Pack Square scheduled for completion in 2008. The photographs for the exhibit are taken from the Ramsey Library collections as well as those of Pack Library and recent photographs associated with the construction of the new park. PRESS RELEASE. |
| July 17, 2006 |
| FLAT ROCK PLAY HOUSE ACQUISITION |
| Special Collections has completed negotiations with the Flat Rock Play House for the acquisition of the archives of the Play House. Also known as the North Carolina State Theater and the Vagabond Players, the theater is one of North Carolina's oldest continuous theaters. Established in 1924, the repertory company has provided the people of western North Carolina with a broad production genre from traditional to experimental. The large collection of material, some 6 linear feet will augment instruction in the UNCA Theater Department, as well as provide information to the general public on the rich contributions of this state theater over the course of its existence. PRESS RELEASE. |
| July 14, 2006 announcement |
| YWCA "SAVE OUR HISTORY" GRANT |
| While we did not receive the "Save Our History Grant" for 2006-2007, from the History Channel, we have established an excellent foundation for future grants with the YWCA. The YWCA will celebrate their 100th year this year in August and it is hoped that we will inaugurate an intensive campaign to digitally process the materials in that collection during the coming academic year. The preliminary structure of the Asheville YWCA archive has been put into place and work will continue on the YWCA administrative records, the photographic material, and the many clipping files in the collection and in scrapbooks, in the hopes that this core material can be placed online by the fall of 2007. The extraordinary work that volunteer Kathy Jackson gave to the application for the "Save Our History" grant is deeply appreciated, as is the support that Bryan Sinclair gave the project during its campus preparation. Tami Ruckman, Development Director and Nora Sinclair have also provided valuable time in the preparation of this project grant. Work on another other income sources will continue in the fall semester and it is expected that other resources will soon be found. |
