New and Noteworthy – Page 2

The Creation of the Department of Communication Studies

University Archives recently acquired records from the Department of Communication, located in Bingham Hall. The records highlighted one of the many departmental reorganizations that have shaped the university: the 1993 merger of the Department of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures (RTVMP) and the Department of Speech Communication. The merger resulted in the Department of Communication Studies, which this month became the Department of Communication.

Department of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures (RTVMP): Three men with equipment, circa 1952 #P0031 — WUNC’s John Young, Dr. Earl Wynn of what was then the Department of Radio, and an unidentified man in a radio studio, circa 1952. The Department of Radio, established in 1947, became the Department of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures in 1954. From the UNC Photographic Laboratory Collection (#P0031), North Carolina Collection Photographic Archive.

In November 1990, the Daily Tar Heel published a series of articles reporting student and alumni dissatisfaction with the job preparation provided by the department. This was further compounded by the department’s refusal of an equipment donation by an RTVMP alumnus on the grounds of insufficient space in Swain Hall, high maintenance costs, and onerous gift conditions. Some RTVMP students and alumni thought the refusal indicated that the department was not dedicated to providing students with technical skills needed for careers in media production.

A 1993 external review of the department included four major recommendations:

1. That the Department of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures at UNC-Chapel Hill be disestablished;

2. That four of its faculty lines be transferred to a new Curriculum in Cultural Studies (or to some other academic unit, temporarily, until permission for a new Curriculum can be secured); at least two of these lines should be filled by persons with media interests;

3. That the remainder of its faculty lines be collected into a new sequence in Media Arts within the Department of Speech Communication;

4. That the Department of Speech Communication’s name be changed to the Department of Communication Studies.

(From the Records of the Department of Speech Communication #40455, unprocessed)

The review was poorly received by many RTVMP students and alumni as it also proposed the elimination of “radio production, broadcast management, corporate video, studio production, and broadcast journalism.” Perceived lack of support for production classes was one of the primary complaints students and alumni reported in 1990, and it had remained a sticking point among students who planned to seek media production jobs following graduation.

The university largely followed recommendations set out in the review and on August 1, 1993, merged the Department of RTVMP and Department of Speech Communication into the Department of Communication Studies. The Daily Tar Heel reported in September 1993 that despite fears that the media production program would suffer as a result of the merger, the new department allocated “$38,500 for production equipment and maintenance—$25,500 more than the RTVMP department had to work with during the last academic year.”

UNC Department of Communication, from https://twitter.com/UNCDeptComm/status/649958554020020224/photo/1 — From the UNC Department of Communication Twitter page

Now in its 22^nd year, the Department of Communication still offers specialization in Media and Technology Studies and Media Production.

LGBTQ Center: New Collection and New Finding Aid

University Archives recently acquired a new collection from the LGBTQ Center. This is an exciting hybrid collection that includes material documenting the center’s history for its ten-year anniversary in 2014. Online content is in the CDR and the finding aid is here. We are very happy to make this material available and look forward to continuing to work with the LGBTQ Center.

Image credit: LGBTQ Center web site, https://lgbtq.unc.edu/programs-services/safe-zone.

New V-Day Carolina Collection

Another new collection at University Archives arrived recently! The V-Day collection from the V-Day Carolina student group contains digital and physical material from 2006 to 2014 related to performances of the Vagina Monologues at UNC in English and Spanish.

FinalBenefitFlyer2013 — Flyer for a 2013 V-Day Benefit from the V-Day Carolina Records ( #40431), University Archives.

V-Day Carolina is a chapter of an international organization that works to end violence against girls and women.

Note: The materials referenced in this blog post have not yet been processed and are currently not available to researchers. If you are interested in viewing these materials in person, please contact University Archives before your visit to determine their availability.

UNC Parachute Club records make a landing at University Archives

Flyer for the 1971-1972 National Collegiate Parachuting Championships. From the Records of the UNC Parachute Club (#40390), University Archives.

Last week, University Archives was excited to receive the records of the UNC Sport Parachute Club, a student organization founded in 1969.

The team represented the University in inter-collegiate competitions including the 1971-1972 National Collegiate Parachuting Championships (flyer above). Notice the spot below the falling parachutist—in competitions, participants were judged upon the accuracy of their landing in relation to a 10-centimeter disc.

Club member and records donor F. J. Hale recalls:

All of us saw similar rewards in parachuting; its beauty and exhilaration, and the unsurpassed freedom of being flung through the sky, and sailing gradually to earth under a huge nylon cloud.

Members of the UNC Sport Parachute Team in 1971.

A club member packs a parachute during a training session at Roanoke Rapids Air Force Station.

Club members at the National Collegiate Parachuting Championships.

Photos from the Records of the UNC Parachute Club (#40390), University Archives.

New Collection from Carolina Performing Arts

We are happy to announce a new collection of Carolina Performing Arts materials at University Archives. These digital and physical items are from the 2013-2014 season and are the beginning of an exciting collection that includes photos and video along with commemorative items from the Rite of Spring at 100.

Materials from the first transfer in the new Carolina Performing Arts collection

Stay tuned for more about this collection!

Farewell to Records Services Archivist, Lawrence Giffin

Today are hearts are heavy as we bid adieu to Records Services Archivist extraordinaire, the one-and-only, Lawrence Giffin.

Lawrence joined UARMS staff in 2011 and for the past two and a half years has led the records management services program at UNC. He has offered countless consultations and trainings to staff across campus, prepared updates for our general records retention and disposition schedule, and managed the records transfer process– not to mention all of the countless other projects in UARMS and the Wilson Special Collections Library that he has contributed to.

Thank you, Lawrence for all of your hard work here at UARMS. You’ll be a tough act to follow, and we’re really going to miss you.

Please continue to send records transfer forms, administrative reference requests, and general records management inquiries and questions to our UARMS email address– recman@unc.edu

You can also call us at (919) 962-6402 for immediate assistance.

We’re all sad to see Lawrence go but wish him all the best in his future endeavors!

A Beautiful Legacy: Collecting Greek Life at UNC

Phi Mu Chapter Association (alumnae) President Debra Pickrel and House Corporation Director Karen O’Donnell Dias discuss which materials the chapter will present to University Archives first.

Over the past year and a half, UNC Chapel Hill’s University Archives has actively pursued student groups in an effort to better represent the history of student life. However, there are a lot of student groups to choose from on our active campus. One of our priorities has been to collect Greek life materials. Because more than 3,000 students on our campus are involved in Greek life, fraternities and sororities are a part of the Carolina Experience for many students.

This semester, Phi Mu will be the first of UNC’s sororities to deposit its materials in University Archives for safekeeping. While we have some fraternity records (including Delta Kappa Epsilon and Chi Psi), sorority records have been noticeably absent in our holdings. As the Gamma Lambda chapter of Phi Mu approached planning for its 50th anniversary in 2014, alumnae began to reflect on their chapter’s history. Realizing that historic materials were stored in several disparate places and that many items could use conservation and preservation, they were eager to find a way to store them in a single location under archival conditions. Participating in the new University Archives initiative will accomplish this and facilitate all future anniversary research.

Phi Mu Chapter Association (alumnae) President Debra Pickrel (center left) shows University Archives and Records Management graduate assistant Morgan Jones a construction photo of the sorority’s house at 211 Henderson Street as Chapter Historian Lauren Spoenimon (far left) and Chapter President Mary Maher (far right) look on.

When Phi Mu’s Gamma Lambda chapter colonized at Carolina in 1964, the Board of Trustees had just approved the admittance of women regardless of their residence or major; however, admittance was still extremely competitive because of the scarcity of housing for female students. With the loan of Phi Mu’s 1964-1965 scrapbook and other materials to University Archives, researchers and chapter sisters alike will be able to understand how Phi Mu began its first 50 years on Carolina’s campus.

We look forward to working with Phi Mu as well as other sororities this year to increase the representation of Greek organizations in University Archives!

If you are a member of a Greek fraternity or sorority and wish to deposit materials in the archives for safe keeping, please contact us!

Saving UNC’s Slice of the Web

If you have ever stumbled across a webpage with this banner across the top of it, you’ve encountered the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine was developed by the Internet Archive in 1996 to start archiving the web, and since then it has collected around 240 billion web pages.

In 2006 the Internet Archive launched Archive-It, which is a hosted service that allows institutions to create their own web archives.

In January of 2013, the UNC Libraries began archiving websites in five different collections. These collections support existing collecting areas in the Libraries and include

Digital Artists’ File curated by the Sloane Art Library,
North Carolina Collection Web Archives,
Rare Book Collection Web Archives,
Southern Historical Collection Web Archives, and
University Archives Web Archives.

You can browse all of our collections through Archive-It, and individual websites have been cataloged for access through the UNC Libraries’ catalog.

Additionally, websites that are part of existing archival collections are described in that collection’s finding aid. For example, you can see description of and get access to an archived version of the North Carolina Literary Festival’s 2009 website from the finding aid for the records of the North Carolina Literary Festival.

Here’s a snippet from that web site, showing the banner that Archive-It uses to let the viewer know that they’re looking at an archived web page.

New Accession: Dr. Herbert Bodman Papers

The University Archives recently acquired the papers of Dr. Herbert L. Bodman, Jr., a UNC professor of Islamic studies who passed away in 2011. Dating from the early 1950s when Bodman was studying in Lebanon, the papers deal primarily with his dissertation research on community identities in the Syrian city of Aleppo during the eighteenth century. To this day, Aleppo is considered the largest city in Syria and has been the site of many historical conflicts, both ancient and modern, from the Crusades to the current civil war.

A multi-linguist, Bodman’s research spans English, French, and Arabic and sheds light on his exhaustive use and translation of a variety of sources. More abstractly, it offers a window into the research process before the time of computers when copious indexing was necessary. Below are some interesting notes from a meeting he had with Arab political leaders–one of whom appears to be Akram al-Hawrani (or Hourani), a leading member of the Baath Party–on March 5, 1953, in which they discuss the idea of Arab unity:

Meeting Notes — “Meeting with Akram Hourani & al-Afflah, 5 March 1953,” Dr. Herbert Bodman Papers, #40388, University Archives

Faculty papers occupy an essential place in the university’s history and, as Herbert Bodman’s papers demonstrate, also offer insight on the world at large.

New University Archives Collections and Additions

Below is a list of new collections and additions to collections in University Archives. The finding aids include a brief description of the contents of the collection, historical information about the department from which the records originated, and a container listing of the collection’s contents. For questions about these collections, please contact Wilson Special Collections Library at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

New:

Assistants to the Chancellor of the University of the North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Susan H. Ehringhaus Records, 1964-1985 (40031)

Susan H. Ehringhaus was appointed assistant to Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor in 1974. Her primary responsibility was to provide legal counsel to the chancellor on university policiee.

Records include correspondence, legal documents, and other materials related to legal issues concerning the university and to court cases involving the university.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40031.html

Additions:

Department of Athletics of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records, 1919-1997 (40093)

The Addition of June 2012 includes files of the director of athletics and other Department of Athletics administrators related to the overall administration of the department and to individual intercollegiate sports, 1919-1997.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40093.html

Office of the Vice Provost for Health Affairs of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records, 1932-2005 (bulk 1950-2000) (40110)

The Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs (later Vice Provost for Health Affairs) was administrative head of the university’s Division of Health Affairs, created in 1948 as the Division of Health and Medical Affairs.

The Addition of January 2013 includes files of Vice Provost for Health Affairs H. Garland Hershey, chiefly 1996-1997, and some files of Associate Provost Edward F. Brooks, 1997-2001.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40110.html