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Partners Share Their Stories: Watauga County Public Library in Boone

We are one of 29 finalists for the Institute of Museum and Library Services 2018 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. Now through April 13, IMLS is asking the people who have been impacted by the Digital Heritage Center to share their stories. If you have a story you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you! Please contact us or share via social media by tagging us on Facebook (@NC Digital Heritage Center) or on Twitter (@ncdhc).

Today’s story comes from Ross Cooper, Adult Services and Reference Librarian at Watauga County Public Library. We’ve worked with Watauga County Public Library to digitize a wide variety of photographs from their “Historic Boone” collection. They have steadily increased their local capacity for digitization and now make collections available to a broader audience at Digital Watauga.

Close up of around 30 boys and girls of elementary school age in a group, all facing the camera

Boone Elementary School Students, 1913 (Detail), Shared by Watauga County Public Library

“As a Reference Librarian at the Watauga County Public Library in Boone, North Carolina, I was fortunate to have been present when, with the help of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, our institution became first involved with historic preservation and digitization. A local group called Historic Boone wished to bequeath the historic images which their group had gathered, described, and cared for over several decades into the caretaking of our library, some ten years ago. Our then-County Librarian accepted the items and made a space for them. I was privileged at about the same time to attend a North Carolina Library Association annual conference presentation in which Nick Graham and Lisa Gregory of the University of North Carolina and the State Library of North Carolina presented on the ways that small public libraries and other institutions with limited resources might take some small steps towards preservation, scanning, and digitized sharing of materials within their collections which hold historical significance. This led us to a few small first attempts, including a blog-format web site with a few, piecemeal, scanned images. The offer of off-site digitization by the NC Digital Heritage Center which was additionally presented at this conference eventually led our library to transport the entire photograph archives of the Historic Boone society to the University of North Carolina to be digitized and shared online via www.digitalnc.org.

“The wide-spread community interest engendered by this undertaking and by the readily-accessible web presence was followed by the successful application by our new Regional Director for an EZ Digitization grant funded by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). The NC Digital Heritage Center provided invaluable support, advice, and encouragement as we used this generous funding opportunity to purchase scanning and computing equipment and to fund a year-long temporary part-time position for a digitization technician. Our community was fortunate at this time to have a historian, Dr. Eric Plaag, move to our area and immediately begin actively and tirelessly working with our town, our library, and the local historical society on a number of projects involving preservation and dissemination of historical material. With his generously-volunteered expert advice, the steps which we had undertaken thanks to the NC Digital Heritage Center have now taken root and grown into a locally-based initiative, Digital Watauga, which is a cooperative venture between the Watauga County Historical Society and the Watauga County Public Library. Other local organizations, including the Junaluska Heritage Association, representing our county’s oldest historically African American community, and numerous interested individuals, have contributed to making this new and growing effort a success, on behalf of all of our area’s people. It was only through the expertise, assistance, and support of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center that any of this work ‘left the ground’! As just one small portion – perhaps the small, rugged, mountainous, Northwestern portion – of the vast array of resources which have been preserved and shared by NC Digital heritage – the strides which we have made in saving and sharing our local history are a testament to the greater work which this institution has done throughout our state, an effort which extends far beyond our local area and our state’s boundaries. I cannot highly enough express my appreciation, personally and as a community member, and I sincerely and heartily endorse the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center as a perfect exemplar of the ideas and ideals which are recognized by the IMLS National Medal for Museum and Library Service.”


Newly Digitized Materials About the Junaluska Community from Watauga County Public Library

A January 2014 article in WNC Magazine detailing the Junaluska community

Dozens of new documents, photos, and artifacts have been newly digitized at DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Watauga County Public Library. They all detail the Junaluska community, a neighborhood where a large number of longtime African-American families of Boone live. Many families also belong to the Mennonite Brethren Church, making it the only Mennonite Brethren church with the majority of members being African-American. Click here to view the newly digitized files.

A 2012 article in the Watauga Democrat celebrating the inaugural Junaluska Jubilee

Included in the new batch of digitized artifacts are several journal articles about the Mennonite Church in Boone, local documents, ancestral generation charts, and newspaper articles about the local community and local figures, including the pastor for the Mennonite Brethren Church. Also included are photos and advertisements for the Junaluska Jubilee, a celebration of the Junaluska community. Finally, there is also an audio clip included about the Junaluska community, including segments on segregation, the civil rights movement, and school integration, narrated by local residents.  

You can learn more about the Watauga County Public Library by visiting the contributor page on DigitalNC or by visiting the homepage. This collection is part of our effort to digitize materials related to underrepresented communities.  To learn more about our underrepresented initiative, go here.  


Dive into new issues of the Watauga Democrat Newspaper

The 1966-1970 issues of the Watauga Democrat (Boone, N.C.) are now available online at Digital NC, thanks to our partner, the Watauga County Public Library

Front page of the September 3, 1970 issue of the Watauga Democrat featuring headline that says "Boone Population Is Set At 8,566"

Browse through this weekly paper to see the happenings of Boone over half a century ago! Weekly marriage announcements, birth announcements, and obituaries are sure to make this a rich resource for any genealogist, especially due to text-searchable pages.

Plus, who doesn’t want to fantasize about grocery prices being this cheap again:

Clipping of grocery ads

Founded in 1888, the Watauga Democrat still reports on local news today. Check out their website here! To explore other issues of the Watauga Democrat on Digital NC, click here. And to search through other North Carolina newspapers in our collection, click here.


Folk Singers & Murder Ballads With The Watauga Democrat

Watauga County, much like the rest of Appalachian American, has a rich history of old-time music and two of the most prominent musicians from the area were Doc Watson and Frank Proffitt. In these 1964 and 1965 issues of Boone’s Watauga Democrat, we have many articles celebrating their lives and achievements.

Photo of Doc Watson sitting down and playing guitar while his son stands behind him.
Doc Watson and Son, Merle
October 15, 1964

Arthel “Doc” Watson (March 3, 1923-May 19, 2012) hails from the small community of Deep Gap, which is about 10 miles east of Boone, and was one of nine children. Despite being blind since infancy, Watson learned to play a variety of instruments at a young age including guitar, banjo, harmonica, and fiddle. By the time of his death Doc had won an astounding seven Grammys but he didn’t release his first solo recording until 1964, at the age of 41. His eponymous debut includes a version of the song Frank Proffitt made famous, Tom Dooley (or Dula), and the two were both featured on the bill for the 1964 Newport Folk Festival.

Frank Proffitt was born June 1, 1913 and would pass away a year after his Newport encounter with Watson on November 24, 1965. Proffitt resided in the north-west portion of Watauga County in Reese, North Carolina and crafted his own instruments in addition to mastering them. In 1937, folklorists Anne and Frank Warner travelled to Western North Carolina, recorded Proffitt’s version of the murder ballad Tom Dula (story told in detail here by our own Sophie Hollis) and passed it on to Alan Lomax. This version would make it into Lomax’s book Folk Song U.S.A. and became a hit in 1958 when the Kingston Trio released a cover titled Tom Dooley. This would greatly increase Proffitt’s popularity as an American folk singer and he would even go on to represent North Carolina at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Photo of Frank Proffitt wearing a white collared shirt, playing banjo, and singing.
Frank Proffitt
September 24, 1964
Newspaper clipping detailing the Newport Folk Festival lineup which includes Frank Proffitt, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Doc Watson.
September 24, 1964
Newspaper clipping announcing the death of Frank Proffitt and describing his legacy as a folk singer, primarily his telling of the "Tom Dula" ballad.
December 2, 1965

These issues of the Watauga Democrat were brought to us by the Watauga County Public Library. You can visit their site and learn about their many events here.


Watauga Yearbooks Include Memories from 5 Schools

A black-and-white photo of students typing on typewriters at desks in a classroom. In the center of the image is an adult with a short afro and glasses wearing a leather jacket.
Tony Hagler, from The Musket, 1970

A batch of yearbooks from Watauga county has just been added to our North Carolina Yearbooks collection thanks to our partner, the Watauga County Public Library. This batch includes yearbooks from four different high schools in the county and one edition of Parkway from Parkway Elementary (1953).

From Blowing Rock High School, we’ve added four volumes of The Breezes from 1953 to 1956. From Cove Creek High School (in Sugar Grove), we’ve added three volumes of The Coveteer from 1952-1956. From Boone, we’ve also got 18 more editions of The Laurel from Appalachian High School (1947-1965) and seven more editions of The Musket from Watauga High School (1966-1972).

Even though these yearbooks might make it seem like high school was just yesterday, there have been at least a few changes to the curriculum since the 1960s and ’70s. For instance, the Business Department at Watauga High School was much more typewriter-centric than business programs today. Some of the classes taught in 1970 included Typing (I and II), Shorthand, Bookkeeping, General Business, and Business English. Perhaps the focus on problem-solving skills has remained the same, though—the caption for the photo above reads, “Tony Hagler, and member of one of the typing classes, seems deeply involved with the completion of his problems.”

You can see the full batch of Watauga county yearbooks here. You can also browse our full collection of digitized North Carolina Yearbooks here by location, school, and year. To see more from the Watauga County Public Library, you can visit their partner page and their website.


More than a Decade of Watauga Democrat Newspapers Now Up

The language lab at Appalachian State Teachers College shown in the December 29, 1960 issue.

More than a decade of the Watauga Deomcrat has been added to DigitalNC courtesy of our partner, the Watauga County Public Library. Started in 1888 and still operating today, the Wautaga Democrat is published in Boone N.C., and serves Western North Carolina. This batch covers the years 1950-1963 and joins previously digitized issues spanning 1923-1949.

According to the Watuga Democrat’s website, the paper began as a political newspaper with a mission to be “the voice of the Watauga Democrat Party,” but quickly evolved into a non-partisan publication. The paper covers local, state, and national news. Many of the stories in the newly digitized issues concern Appalachian State Teacher’s College, which became Appalachian State University in 1967.

You can see more materials from our partner the Watauga County Public Library by taking a look at their DigitalNC partner page  or by visiting their website. To see more community newspapers from many counties in North Carolina, please visit the North Carolina Newspapers Collection.

A chilly headline from January 16, 1961


Watauga Democrat now online

01-13-The Watauga Democrat, January 13, 1944, page 6

The Watauga Democrat, January 13, 1944, page 6

Nearly 30 years of newspapers are now available on DigitalNC courtesy of our partner, the Watauga County Public Library. Hailing from Boone N.C., the Watauga Democrat has been serving the Western NC community since 1888 and is still in print today.

This batch of newspapers covers several important time periods in NC’s history, including the Depression era and World War II. In addition to local, state, and national news, they offer creative advertisements, many for places Boone residents will recognize, like the Daniel Boone Inn. Newspapers like these could be excellent resources for genealogists interested in the area or teachers looking for primary sources from Boone.

To learn more about the Watauga Democrat, check out the about section on their website.

You can learn more about the Watauga County Public Library by visiting the contributor page on DigitalNC or by visiting the homepage. To see more community newspapers from many counties in North Carolina, please visit the North Carolina Newspapers Collection.

The Watauga Democrat, July 26, 1923, page 6

The Watauga Democrat, July 26, 1923, page 6


Newspapers Selected for Digitization, 2017-2018

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.

Title Years Nominating Institution
Alamance Gleaner (Graham, N.C.) 1927-1947 Alamance County Public Libraries
Carolina Indian Voice (Pembroke, N.C.) 1977-1995 UNC Chapel Hill
Carteret County News-Times (Morehead City, N.C.) 1948-1960 Carteret County Public Library
Charlotte Post 1971-1987 Johnson C. Smith University
The Cherokee Scout (Murphy, N.C.) 1944-1988 Murphy Public Library
Duplin Times (Warsaw, N.C.) 1962-1985 Duplin County Library
Enterprise (Williamston, N.C.) 1934-1942 Martin Memorial Library
Farmville Enterprise 1942-1947 Farmville Public Library
Franklin Press and the Highlands Maconian (Franklin, N.C.) 1943-1960 Fontana Regional Library
The Franklin Times (Louisburg, N.C.) 1925-1944; 1963-1969 Louisburg College
Hertford County Herald (Ahoskie, N.C.) 1914-1923 Chowan University
Journal-Patriot (North Wilkesboro, N.C.) 1947-1950 Wilkes County Public Library
Mount Airy News 1917-1929 Surry Community College
News-Record (Marshall, N.C.) 1976-1988 Madison County Public Library
Perquimans Weekly (Hertford, N.C.) 1944-1989 Perquimans County Library
Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.) 1948-1965 Southern Pines Public Library
The Roxboro Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) 1927-1935 Person County Public Library
Smithfield Herald 1901-1911 Johnston County Heritage Center
Transylvania Times (Brevard, N.C.) 1933-1940 Transylvania County Library
Watauga Democrat (Boone, N.C.) 1950-1963 Watauga County Public Library
Waynesville Mountaineer 1952-1956 Haywood County Public Library
Winston-Salem Chronicle 1997-2016 Forsyth County Public Library

Calling all North Carolina High School Alumni Associations

davie_county_training_school_reunion

Davie County Training School Reunion (1980s) Courtesy Davie County Public Library.

Yearbooks and other types of school memorabilia are some of the most popular types of items we digitize. They bring out nostalgic feelings, in addition to being sources of information about individuals and communities.

Some of the most prolific preservers of school memorabilia are High School Alumni Associations, and we’re pleased to announce that the Digital Heritage Center will now work with them to help share their collections online.

For the last 6 years, the Digital Heritage Center has served cultural heritage institutions throughout North Carolina. While many Alumni Associations may not have a brick and mortar presence, they are often entities with long histories and an active and coordinated membership. We are looking forward to helping them share their history online, along with the libraries, archives, museums and other institutions we currently partner with.

It’s important to us that users of DigitalNC.org can get in touch with the institutions that hold the collections we digitize over time. To that end, we’re happy to work with Alumni Associations that are organized and persistent. To participate, the Alumni Association must be associated with a North Carolina high school and have at least a few of these characteristics:

  • have contact information (phone, email, address) belonging to the association and not just held by an individual or individuals,
  • have been in existence longer than 5 years,
  • be incorporated as a 501(c) organization,
  • hold regular meetings or events,
  • maintain an online presence (an updated website or active Facebook page),
  • operate with some sort of governance structure.

If you’re part of an Alumni Association and are interested in becoming a partner, please read about how to participate and get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you!

cove_creek_high_school_class_of_1949_reunion

Cove Creek High School Class of 1949 Reunion (1997) Courtesy Watauga County Public Library.


Newspapers Selected for Digitization, 2015

The following microfilmed newspapers have been selected for digitization in 2015. Almost 90 reels were chosen from over 600 nominated reels, according to our Criteria for Selecting Newspapers to Digitize from Microfilm.

Title Years Nominating Institution
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.) 1985-1992 Rourk Branch Library
Jackson County Journal (Sylva, N.C.) 1921-1943 Jackson County Public Library
The Journal-Patriot (North Wilkesboro, N.C.)  1933-1947 Wilkes County Public Library
The Kings Mountain Herald (Kings Mountain, N.C.) 1937-1954 Mauney Memorial Library
Polk County News (Tryon, N.C.)  1923-1926 Polk County Public Library
The Sylva Herald and Ruralite (Sylva, N.C.) 1943-1950 Jackson County Public Library
Trench and Camp (Charlotte, N.C.) 1917-1918 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library
The Warren Record (Warrenton, N.C.) 1929-1970 Warren County Memorial Library
Watauga Democrat (Boone, N.C.) 1923-1950 Watauga County Public Library
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1974-1996 Forsyth County Public Library

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