We are excited to welcome a new partner and announce our first batch of materials from Tri-County Community College! Founded in 1964, TCCC is located in Murphy, NC in mountainous Cherokee County. The materials in this upload include over 40 course catalogs and 8 yearbooks from 1975-1985, providing researchers with a trove of information on the programs and students of TCCC from 1967 to the present day.
Senior superlatives from the 1964 The Robin yearbook.
Graham County Public Library, one of our westernmost partners, has contributed our first Graham County yearbooks to DigitalNC. There are now 11 yearbooks from Robbinsville High School (1950-1967) available online. In addition they provided two from Tri-County Community College (1979-1982) in Murphy, NC (Cherokee County).
A 1930 illustration to celebrate that year’s July 4 anniversary
Courtesy of our partners, the Murphy Public Library and the Nantahala Regional Library, almost 30 more years of the Cherokee Scout have been newly digitized. That brings our collection to nearly 2500 issues, stretching from 1923-1971! These are brand new to DigitalNC and we are proud to present them. Published weekly, The Cherokee Scout serves Cherokee County, where it remains a staple to its readership of nearly 10,000.
A Nov. 1938 article announcing UNC President Graham’s visit to the local Murphy Library
Because of the long time-span of papers now in our collection, it is fascinating to see what sort of issues were being discussed throughout the community’s history. For example, in 1938, UNC’s President Dr. Frank Graham visited Murphy and toured the construction of the Hiwassee Dam and the village set up by the Tennessee Village Authority to bring electricity to the county. As World War II began a few years later, many men from the county enlisted in the different branches of service.
Later, in the 1950s, many of Cherokee County’s children were vaccinated for polio. Inventor Jonas Salk was written of very fondly in the Scout, as Cherokee County had to have numerous money drives for polio in the prior decade. Unusually for newspapers in North Carolina, the Scout also included news from Georgia, including market prices in Atlanta, due to its close proximity.
An April 1955 announcing polio vaccination treatments for local Cherokee County children
Having this newspaper in our collection brings us a wealth of valuable knowledge about how Cherokee County residents interpreted important events at the time and how they were affected. To browse through other materials from the Murphy Public Library and the Nantahala Regional Library, visit their partner pages, or visit their websites here.
20 years of the Cherokee Scout, from Murphy, N.C., are now available online. Murphy Public Library, located in Cherokee County, is a new partner on DigitalNC and the first from the county.
Cherokee Scout, July 27, 1923, page 4
Like many community newspapers, the Scout contains many stories of national importance, as well as local events and activities. The Scout documents and reflects stories of importance to the community, especially crop reports, sermons, humor, poetry, and serial stories. Newspapers like these are useful for researchers of all types as they are full of names, dates, and cultural data.
Murphy’s proximity to the Georgia border also offers information about that region– making this newspaper a unique resource for researchers interested in the economic and social links between North Carolina and Georgia mountain communities.
The Cherokee Scout is still an active newspaper with 9,600 readers. You can learn more about the history of this newspaper, it’s owners, and the happenings of this Western NC community by visiting the landing page.
To learn more about Murphy Public Library, please visit the contributor page or the website. Learn more about community newspaper and find information from your community by visiting the North Carolina Newspapers Collection.
Thanks to our partner, Southwestern Community College (SCC), a new batch of materials are now available on DigitalNC! This batch has over 190 new records that include a Great Smoky Mountains trail map, local histories, previous course catalogs, various newsletters, SCC program pamphlets, over 100+ photograph slides showcasing the college campus and nearby beautiful mountain views.
Located in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina, Southwestern Community College held its first classes on December 1, 1964 under the name “Jackson County Industrial Education Center.” During that time, the school was a satellite of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Institute. In September 1967, however, the satellite became an independent school and was renamed Southwestern Technical Institute (STI). The school’s name changed once more in 1979 to Southwestern Technical College before becoming Southwestern Community College in 1988.
The years following STI’s independence from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Institute were filled with construction of buildings, receiving accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, their first on-campus commencement ceremony, establishment of the Cherokee Center, and much more. Today, SCC has facilities across several counties as well as on the Qualla Boundary, is the only community college in the nation to enter into a cooperative science agreement with NASA, and offers over 40 academic programs for students to choose from.
This week we have another 32 titles up on DigitalNC! Eleven of these papers are from Asheville, including a few with a focus on the organized labor movement.
When people think of North Carolina, unions aren’t typically the first thing that come to mind, which makes sense since the state has the second lowest union representation rate in the country at 2.6%, only beating South Carolina by about 1%. However, in the first half of the 20th century, the labor movement was alive and well, that is until North Carolina officially became a Right-To-Work state in 1947, greatly limiting the power of unions in the state. In the 1950s, the unionization rate was 9% and it has been on the decline ever since.
The Workman, March 30, 1901
The Asheville Banner, July 30, 1931
Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.
If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.
The one and one-quarter mile rail line extended from the Capitol Building, which had burned in 1831, to a quarry just east of Raleigh. When the horse-drawn rail carts weren’t transporting the stone used to rebuild the Capitol, people could ride the line in “pleasure cars” for a 25 cent fare. The line cost $2,700 to construct, which would be roughly $91,000 in 2022.
Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.
If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.
The NDNP is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress with the intention of creating a vast, searchable database of newspapers and other historical documents. You can currently search all of the NDNP issues on the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website. Those same issues will be available on our newspaper database, allowing you to search that content alongside the other papers on DigitalNC. The week’s titles are the following:
This concludes the list of newspapers that we are sharing from the NDNP. If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.
Thanks to our partner, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, catalogs from the school and its precursors are now available on our website. The catalogs are from 1906, when the school was called the Croatan Normal School, to 2013, when it was known as it is now as UNC-Pembroke.
The title page of the 1906 catalog for the Croatan Normal School.
The school was originally established in 1887 as the Croatan Normal School as a result of legislation that passed in response to a petition by Native Americans of the area. This original school was established for the training of Native American teachers in Robeson County. In 1909 the school was moved to Pembroke and in 1911 the name was changed to the Indian Normal School of Robeson County. Then, in 1913, the name was changed again to the Cherokee Indian Normal School of Robeson County. In 1933, junior college coursework was added to the school’s curriculum and in 1939, four-year degree programs were instituted. In 1941 the name was changed again to the Pembroke State College for Indians. In 1945, enrollment was opened to people from all government-recognized groups of Native Americans, rather than just the Native Americans from Robeson County. In 1953, white students began to be admitted to the school and in 1969, the name was changed to Pembroke State University. In 1972, the University of North Carolina system was established, with Pembroke State University as one of the sixteen campuses included. In 1996, the school became The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, as it is known today.
The cover of the Pembroke State University course catalog from the 1975-1976 academic year.
We’ll be working with the University of North Carolina at Pembroke to fill in additional catalogs over the coming months. We’ve also worked with them to scan their yearbooks, and you can see those on their contributor page. For more information about the university, visit their website.
The following microfilmed newspapers were selected for digitization in 2017-2018. Thanks to supplemental funding from the State Library of North Carolina, we were able to complete more reels than in previous years. Reels were chosen from nominations according to our Criteria for Selecting Newspapers to Digitize from Microfilm.
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
