June 2009 – Southern Sources

New Finding Aid Design

You might have noticed that some of the finding aids for the Southern Historical Collection have a new look. Thanks to the hard work of Special Collections Technical Services TRA Joyce Chapman, the finding aid re-design has been implemented. We hope that the new finding aid display will be user-friendly and easy-to-navigate.

This new display applies to approximately half of our finding aids; some finding aids will still look the same. We are working towards converting all of our finding aids to the new design.

Please let us know if you notice any problems with this new presentation. We’d like to find and fix all of the glitches this summer while Joyce is still working for us. One bug that we will fix ASAP is that Internet Explorer chokes on longer finding aids. They take some time to load and it is difficult to scroll through them.

Please email us at mss@email.unc.edu if you see anything in the new design that looks strange.

Here are a few examples:

Taylor Branch Papers:
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/b/Branch,Taylor.html

Cameron Family Papers:
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/c/Cameron_Family.html

Delta and Providence Cooperative Farms Papers
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/d/Delta_and_Providence_Cooperative_Farms.html

“Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away”

Still from the Zapruder film, which was shot on Kodachrome — Still from "the Zapruder film," which was shot on Kodachrome

The Eastman Kodak Company announced this week that the camera film, Kodachrome, would be taken off the market, citing declining demand for the film in the era of digital photography

During its 74 year history Kodachrome has been relished by professional and amateur photographers alike, both for its exceptional color quality and archival longevity. Over the years, many historically and culturally important moments were documented with some form of Kodachrome film. In fact, Abraham Zapruder’s 8mm reel (the so-called “Zapruder film”) of President John Kennedy’s 1963 assassination was shot on Kodachrome motion picture stock.

Making the transition

Although Kodak has halted production of Kodachrome effective immediately, the company states that the film will be available until it sells out – which they predict will be sometime this fall.

Many Kodak and independent laboratories once processed Kodachrome film, but now only one Kodak-certified facility remains: Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas. Dwayne’s Photo’s website proclaims that they will continue processing Kodachrome until December 31, 2010.

Kodak will donate the last rolls of Kodachrome to the George Eastman House photography museum at its headquarters in Rochester, New York.

“Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away”

The Eastman Kodak Company announced this week that the camera film, Kodachrome, would be taken off the market, citing declining demand for the film in the era of digital photography

Making the transition

Although Kodak has halted production of Kodachrome effective immediately, the company states that the film will be available until it sells out – which they predict will be sometime this fall.

Kodak will donate the last rolls of Kodachrome to the George Eastman House photography museum at its headquarters in Rochester, New York.

New SOHP Database

The Southern Historical Collection is pleased to present the new Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) interview database, at http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/sohp/?CISOROOT=/sohp.

The new site provides users with even greater search capabilities and functionality. Most importantly, we now have the ability to deliver digital content on the Web. In addition to the 500+ interviews already delivered digitally by the IMLS funded Documenting the American South’s digital collection Oral Histories of the American South, users can now access another 330 digital transcripts as well as approximately 290 digital audio interviews from the new site. These numbers will only continue to grow.

The new site includes a number of browse pages (Interviewee, Interviewer, Project, Occupation, Subject, and Ethnicity), as well as the old site’s keyword searches. A powerful advanced search is available from the main Libraries digital collections search page as well.

We invite comments and feedback on the new database.

The Photographs of Alexander Rivera

The image: two young men stride through two large open doors. Each man is carrying a packet of papers. The men are smiling and seem confident.

I had seen this image many times before. In fact, we have a print of this photograph in the SHC’s collection of J. Kenneth Lee Papers. From our description of the photograph in the finding aid for the Lee Papers and from the other images that accompanied it in the collection, I knew that the photograph depicted the historic moment, on the morning of June 11, 1951, when Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee entered South Building on UNC’s campus to complete their registration in the UNC School of Law, thereby becoming the first ever African American students to enroll at the University.

What I didn’t know, until this morning, was that this photograph was taken by Alexander M. Rivera Jr. Thanks to a news release from the NC Department of Cultural Resources regarding the mounting of an exhibit featuring Rivera’s work at the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum in Sedalia, N.C., I now know the correct attribution for this image.

Alex Rivera was a nationally renowned and prominent photojournalist. He also established the public relations office at North Carolina Central University, and served as the office’s first director.

Beech and Lee were both students at Central’s Law School who, through a lawsuit supported by the NAACP, were able to argue that their educational opportunities at Central were not equal to those that they would receive at Carolina.

So, it would follow that Rivera would have been present to document this moment as two of N.C. Central’s top law students transferred from Central to enroll as the first African American students at Carolina.

Last October, Alex Rivera passed away in Durham, N.C. at the age of 95. His legacy lives on in the historic photographs that he captured during his amazing life. Now, you have another chance to view some of these photographs. The exhibit, “Bearing Witness: Civil Rights Photographs of Alexander Rivera,” is on view the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum until August 15, 2009.

[One last note: You can listen online to Harvey Beech speak about his experience at Carolina.]

Announcing the new Folklife blog

One of our partner collections here on the fourth floor of the Wilson Library, the Southern Folklife Collection (SFC), is proud to announce the arrival of their new blog, “Field Trip South.” The blog will be a great resource for readers to learn more about the holdings of the SFC, to follow SFC events and happenings, and to enjoy some of the sights and sounds of the collection.

Et voilà…

http://blogs.lib.unc.edu/sfc

Research Repositories and Local Historical Organizations: Working Together with Complementary Purposes

I think research repositories and local historical organizations can work to each other’s benefit much more than they traditionally have done, and that a little thinking upfront about differing missions and needs is important if this is to happen.

Local organizations often use their excellent contacts in the community to collect documentation that has research value. Repositories have the facilities and know-how to preserve that documentation and make it available to community members and others over the long future.

Here are what I think are important considerations:

For research repositories:

Recognize that the primary purpose of local historical organizations is to help build and deepen community by giving local citizens a sense of their past.

Be ready to stretch usual procedures to do what is possible to make documentation acquired from the local organizations easily accessible to them and their communities.

For local organizations:

Recognize that the main purpose of repositories is to preserve materials that will be useful for research.

Be ready to stretch to obtain the agreements and permissions from donors and informants that will make placement in repositories possible.

Two collections in the SHC resulting from collaborations like this are the Caswell County Historical Association Records (http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/c/Caswell_County_Historical_Association.html) and the Penn School Records (http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/p/Penn_School.html).

I’d be interested in others’ thoughts about this.

Historical marker to be placed in Raleigh today to remember a dark chapter in NC history

Image of Eugenics Board historical marker

The Raleigh News & Observer reported yesterday that, “State officials are dedicating a historical marker to remember the forced sterilization program that affected thousands of people in North Carolina.” The North Carolina Highway Historical Marker contains a historical description of the North Carolina eugenics program that lasted from 1929 into the 1970s. About 7,600 people were sterilized in North Carolina during this period.

Recently, a state House panel approved a measure that would give $20,000 each to surviving victims of the eugenics program. However, due to the state’s budget shortfalls of late, it is unclear if the state will have the $18.6 million dollars needed to enact the measure next year.

The historical marker will be dedicated today (Monday, June 22, at 5pm) at the N.C. Community Colleges building at 200 W. Jones Street in Raleigh. The ceremony will be attended by state leaders and several living victims of the program.

[Note: This difficult period in our state’s history is also the subject of a new digital project by the State Library of North Carolina. The project features digitized material from the North Carolina Eugenics Board/Commission.]

Historical marker to be placed in Raleigh today to remember a dark chapter in NC history

Sharing a “Juneteenth” post from UNC Press Blog

Friday marked the commemoration of “Juneteenth” — the day that commemorates June 19, 1865, when slaves in the Galveston, Texas, area heard a proclamation of freedom read by Union General Gordon Granger.

This morning we read a great blog post from our friends at UNC Press that gives a great explanation of the history of Juneteenth and the tradition of “Emancipation Day.” This (re)post was written by William A. Blair, professor of U.S. history and director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University. We thought we’d pass it along.

Link to post: “Juneteenth, Emancipation, and the Proclamation” (links out to the UNC Press Blog)