Links to Related Collections and Archives

UNC Asheville Special Collections has worked with NC ECHO to create collaborative digitization projects with a variety of partners. As both a recipient and partner in NC ECHO LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) grants in 2000-2001, 2002-2003, and 2004-2005, UNCA continues to work with their partners to provide digital collections to a broad public. The original four partners, the Asheville Art Museum, Asheville-Buncombe County Library, and the YMI Cultural Center provided a base for establishing new partnerships that included, Appalachian State University- William Leonard Eury Appalachian Collection, the Appalachian Cultural Museum at Boone, and the Southern Highland Craft Guild. While not all partnerships have been sustainable, the process of establishing the relationships and the dialogue have proved to be fruitful. The focus of many of the NC ECHO grants has been to provide primary resource materials for the K-12 community and for their individual patrons. The most recent project, the Heritage of Western North Carolina has received very positive feed-back from the K-12 community and contains many materials appropriate to the North Carolina standard course of study.

Digital Library of Appalachia
Comprised of materials drawn from the repositories of the member libraries of the Appalachian College Association libraries, the Digital Library of Appalachia provides online access to archival and historical materials related to the culture of the southern and central Appalachian region.

Appalachian Collection - Mountain Regional Library
This collection deals primarily with Appalachian regional musical instruments, songs, and artists and includes both religious and secular music. Interlibrary loan of print material only.

P.O. Box 159

698 Miller St.

Young Harris, GA 30582

(706) 379-3732

(706) 379-2047 (Fax)

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Appalachian Reading Room and Archives, Mars Hill College
 

Archives of Appalachia at Sherrod Library-East Tennessee State University
The Archives of Appalachia is part of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services. The Archives includes three units concerned with the collection, preservation, and public use of historical materials:

Appalachian Collection, a multimedia collection of materials that documents the political, economic, social, and cultural history of Southern Appalachia

University Archives, which includes official records and publications, photographs, personal papers, and audio and video recordings documenting the history of East Tennessee State University

Special Collections, containing books and other published materials concerning southern Appalachian culture, history, and literature. Particular strengths are in local and Tennessee state history, folklore, and regional literature and linguistics. In addition to regional material is the rich antiquarian collection of English and Scottish history titles focused on the 16th and 17th century.

Asheville Art Museum
Accredited by the American Association of Museums and supported through the North Carolina Arts Council, the local Arts Alliance and other corporate and private sponsors, the Asheville Art Museum is the only museum of its kind in the Western North Carolina region. The museum has an active rotating exhibit schedule and a solid core of art in its permanent exhibits. It is a partner institution in the Land of the Sky grant and works cooperatively with Ramsey Library and Special Collection on a variety of  projects including the current Douglas Ellington Project.

Asheville Buncombe County Library (Pack LIbrary) - North Carolina Room
The archival holdings for the central library for Buncombe County, NC are not yet available online, but provide those who visit the library with a wealth of local and regional history. The card file and in-house electronic file for the Asheville Citizen and Asheville Times and Asheville Citizen-Times provide the only index for local and regional newspapers. The Thomas Wolfe collection is particularly noteworthy as are the Sondley materials which cover local and state history. Pack Library partnered with UNCA in an LSTA digitization grants in 2000-2001 and has again partnered for a second grant in 2001-2002. 

Berea College Hutchins Library Archives and Special Collections
Rich in Appalachian regional material, this Library holds the parent collection of published works on the region. Begun in 1914 the Wetherford-Hammond Mountain Collection is central to the study of Appalachia and is the earliest book collection to be assembled on the topic. The manuscript collections are also strong in Appalachian material. The Southern Appalachian Archives represents the collective holdings.  The institution also contains important papers related to the struggles to end slavery. The Shedd Lincoln Collection,  a repository of book on the subject of the abolition of slavery is particularly noteworthy. The Berea College Appalachian Sound Archive contains recordings of folkways, music, storytelling, literature, oral histories, scholarship and humor.

Berea College, Appalachian Center
The Appalachian Center at Berea College provides a variety of resources to those interested in Appalachian culture. The site includes information on the Brushy Fork Institute, a unique outreach program that provides training programs, leadership guidance, workshops, and technical assistance to communities in the southern Appalachians.

Documenting the American South  (DAS) - UNC at Chapel Hill
This rich collection sponsored by the Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,  is nationally recognized as a primary source for Southern history. The collections are divided into projects and include the following:

 First-Person Narratives of the American South
 Library of Southern Literature
 North American Slave Narratives
 The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865
 The Church in the Southern Black Community

Covering periods from the colonial to the early twentieth-century, the projects of the site are broad in scope. A new project will focus only on North Carolina, yet many materials from the home state may be found in the existing projects. Approximately 940 books and manuscripts may be accessed in full text. Worldcat and the UNC-CH library OPAC (ONLINE CATALOG) also contain a complete listing of the holdings. 

William Leonard Eury Appalachian Collection, Appalachian State University
The W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection is a repository for materials related to the Southern Highlands. A comprehensive, multidisciplinary library with special strengths in folklore, ethnography, music, religion, local history, genealogy, fiction and African and Native Appalachia, it houses about 15,000 books, more than 3200 reels of microfilm, 5300 microfiche, 1600 audiotapes, 900 commercially produced phonodiscs, and 200 videotapes and films, about 1,000 linear feet of manuscripts, 150 linear feet of clipping file containing articles from Southern Appalachian area newspapers about the region, over 100 periodical subscriptions, several hundred maps, as well as slides, photographs and ephemera.

Special Collections Library at Duke University
Developing an understanding of human experience and culture requires access to historical documentation in many forms and subject areas. The Special Collections Library at Duke University preserves such documentation and promotes its use. While the library's holdings are developed in relation to instructional and research interests in the University, they are available for use by visiting scholars and the general public as well as Duke faculty and students.

NCSU Libraries Special Collections & University Archives
The North Carolina State University Archives solicits, preserves and makes accessible the legal, administrative, and historical records of the University. In addition to a large collection of University memorabilia and an extensive photograph collection, The Univeristy Archives houses several private manuscript collections of individuals and organizations associated with the university. Special Collections contains rare, fragile, and valuable books and serials, including limited editions and signed copies. Special Collections also houses the archival copies of NCSU theses and dissertations, as well as the Metcalf and Smith Collections of entomological research materials.

Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Rare Books and Manuscript, Wake Forest University
Special collections in the Reynolds Library include the Rare Books Collections and the Ethel Taylor Crittenden Baptist Historical Collection. The Rare Books collection, greatly enhanced by the donation of rare and fine books of the late Charles H. Babcock, emphasizes American and British authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among such collections are those of Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot. There is also an extensive Anglo-Irish literature collection. The Baptist Historical Collection contains significant books, periodicals, manuscripts, and church records relating to North Carolina Baptists as well as a collection of the personal papers of prominent ministers, educators and government officials. The Wake Forest College/University Archive is also maintained in this area.

KYVL - Kentuckiana Virtual Library
A digital library of Appalachian and Kentucky material. It includes significant full-text collections that document cultural aspects of the Southern Appalachians. Of particular note is  the full run of Mountain Life and Work, a periodical containing a wealth of information on the cultural, social, medical, and historical life of the southern Appalachians.

AmericanSouth.org
AmericanSouth is a collaborative effort to improve access to digital resources on Southern History and Culture.  It seeks to make material crucial to the understanding of the Southern experience accessible to all citizens through the creation of a collaborative digital collection of Southern history and culture.

Southern Highland Craft Guild, Asheville, NC
The archives of the Guild are not yet fully available to the public, however the visual object collections have been displayed through a variety of past, current and forthcoming exhibits at the Blue Ridge Parkway's Folk Art Center near Asheville, NC. The Guild is the primary repository for southern Appalachian craft history.

Special Collections and Archives, University of Kentucky
"The major goal of the division, which was founded in 1946, is to locate and preserve materials documenting the social, cultural, economic, and political history of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Materials are acquired regardless of format and include both primary and secondary sources. We attempt to collect Kentuckiana comprehensively. Another major objective is to support the programs of the University by preserving its past and by providing source materials which will further scholarship and research. The Division is also charged with maintaining a records management program for all records generated by the University and serves as an archival repository for permanent records."

Appalachian Collection West Virginia University
WVU Libraries maintains one of the nation's best collections on Appalachian regional culture. Appalachia, an area surrounding the Appalachian Mountains from New York to Mississippi, encompasses all of West Virginia and portions of twelve other states. Like New England, the South, the Northwest and Southwest, Appalachia is a unique cultural area of the United States with special traditions, folkways, dialects, values, and problems.

 Virginia Tech Library - Special Collections
Contains some 1300 collections that focus primarily on the history of the southern Appalachians. Particularly relevant are the railroad history files covering the Norfolk and Western Railway Company, the Southern Railway Company, and many of the predecessor companies from roughly 1830 to the 1930's.  Records pertaining to the Civil War will also be interest to those studying this particular period. Currently, the collection distributes the finding aids for three specialized archives: the Appalachian Collection, the Archives of American Aerospace Exploration, and the International Archive of Women in Architecture.