Viewing entries posted in December 2017

2017’s Most Popular Items on DigitalNC.org

We’ve taken a look back at this year’s top 5 most viewed items on DigitalNC, and they may not be what you expect! Here they are in order of popularity.

#1 Madison Beach

Contributing Institution: Rockingham Community College

The most viewed single item on DigitalNC was this photo:

View through trees of swimmers 

Want to know more about Madison Beach? We did, and found this page in a Rockingham County Public Library volume by local author John T. Dallas to help us out.

Clippings about Madison Beach from the Madison Messenger newspaper

 

#2 Newspaper Clippings about the Hibriten Company

Contributing Institution: Hickory Public Library

Hickory Public Library has shared a variety of files related to local businesses, and this one on Hibriten Furniture was the second most popular item.

Hibriten Furniture newspaper clipping

#3 Jim Thornton Band

Contributing Institution: Harnett County Public Library

This picture of Jim Thornton and his band includes Congressman Harold D. Cooley and singer Mozelle Phillips. The band played at dances and events, as well as on the radio and a live country music television show out of Raleigh entitled “Saturday Night Country Style.”

Five band members holding instruments stranding with man in a suit

#4 Wiggins Mill Bridge Postcard

Contributing Institution: Wilson County Public Library

From the 1880s, this postcard shows the bridge spanning Contentnea Creek in Wilson County, with “Wiggin’s Mill” and the reservoir waterfall in the background. Wiggin’s Mill was a sawmill, and can be found in newspapers of that era as a local landmark both on land and on the creek. The Wilson Advance describes the Wiggin’s Mill bridge floating away in a “freshet” in June 1891.

Colored postcard with bridge over river

#5 1976 Yackety Yack Yearbook

Contributing Institution: UNC-Chapel Hill

Taken together, yearbooks are the most popular items available on our site. It’s not surprising that one made the top 5 list. This 1976 Yackety Yack has spectacular photographs with 1970s style.

Title page of the 1976 Yack, with Chapel Hill metal plate

For the curious, here are some overall numbers for DigitalNC for 2017. Here’s looking forward as we work with partners to share even more of North Carolina’s cultural heritage in 2018!

Pageviews 3,510,047
Users 390,667
Scans Added 567,315

1945 Film of Willsherr Lodge on Win-Mock Farm now online

A new video has been digitized and added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, Davie County Public Library. The original 16mm film shows Dr. S. Clay Williams Jr. walking around the garden at Willsherr Lodge on Win-Mock Farm in uniform in 1945. Click here to view the film.

A frame from the video, showing Dr. S. Clay Williams Jr walking in the garden

Win-Mock Farm is a plot of land along the Yadkin River built by S. Clay Williams, president of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, located halfway between Winston-Salem and Mocksville. The Willsherr Lodge acted as the large family home, which is very briefly visible in the film.

To learn more about Win-Mock Farm, their website is here. To see more materials from Davie County Public Library, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.


Dozens of Cape Fear Community College Catalogs and Handbooks Now Online

Dozens of catalogs from Cape Fear Community College are now online at DigitalNC. The publications span fifty years, from 1967 to 2017. In the beginning, the institution was called Cape Fear Technical Institute, and it received its current name of Cape Fear Community College in 1988. These various catalogs cover admissions, student registration for classes, financial aid, scheduling, and the lists of programs and classes. A few of the classes offered are specific to the coastal environment, such as marine technology, boat building, commercial fishing, or marine diesel mechanics, although there are more traditional programs like business administration or criminal justice. Many of the more recent catalogs also include the student handbooks.

The Cape Fear Community College catalog for 1992-1994.

The Cape Fear Community College catalog and student handbook for 2014-2015.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to browse through the catalogs. To learn more about Cape Fear Community College, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.


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.  


More from the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection

New additions to the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, provided by our partner, Durham County Library, are now online. This collection of funeral programs and obituaries of African American Durham residents was compiled by R. Kelly Bryant (1917-2015), a historian with an extensive knowledge of Durham, North Carolina.

The collection is arranged alphabetically by last names of individuals. Names included in the newest addition cover the surnames Gaddy through Kearny. The funeral programs and obituaries are an excellent genealogical source and often include biographical details like birth and death dates, names of family members, locations lived, and aspects of an individual’s life story. We will continue to digitize this collection, so check back for more additions in the coming months.

To take a look at what we have digitized so far of the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, please visit the collection’s exhibit page. Information about the collection is also available in the finding aid on Durham County Library’s website.

To see more materials from Durham County Library, visit their DigitalNC partner page, or take a look at their website.


More issues of The Chronicle out of Winston-Salem now available

The front page of The Chronicle from January 1, 2015. The Caption under the image reads “Zen Sadler (center) helps Don Williams and Patricia Sadler light the Kwanzaa kinara.”

Almost 20 years of The Chronicle from Winston-Salem are now online thanks to our partner, Forsyth County Public Library. Issues of The Chronicle continue to be published on a weekly basis, and this new batch covers the years 1997-2016 minus 2000. This batch joins previously digitized issues spanning 1974-1996.

The Chronicle targets the African-American community in Winston-Salem, and their website states, “We focus on positive news happening in Winston-Salem and some surrounding areas.” Topics covered include Arts & Lifestyle, Business, Education, Local News, Government, Health, Religion, and Sports. These papers offer a look at Winston-Salem’s changing and cultural landscape and community from the 1970s through today. Click here to browse through all digitized issue of The Chronicle.

To see more materials from Forsyth County Public Library, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website. To learn more about The Chronicle and check out recently published articles, visit The Chronicle’s website.


Loray Digital Archive expanded to include 1980s union efforts at Firestone Mill

We were excited this past semester to partner with the AMST 475H, Documenting Communities class here at UNC to show them how a digitization project works from star to finish.  This is a guest post from the class.

Written by: Dani Callahan and Lucas Kelley

New material that documents the unionization of the Gastonia’s Firestone Mill have been added to DigitalNC’s existing collection on the mill: the Loray Digital Archive. The Gaston County Museum of Art and History provided the materials for digitization, and UNC-Chapel Hill students in Professor Robert Allen’s Documenting Communities course scanned the material, researched the unionization movement, and added metadata to the documents.

The unionization of the Firestone Mill occurred in the late 1980s and was particularly contentious both within the mill community and throughout the region. The violent unionization efforts of the 1920s, exemplified in the Loray strike of 1929, had left deep wounds within Gastonia, and area residents and workers had traditionally distrusted subsequent unionization attempts. The widespread economic downturn in the textile industry in the 1980s, however, meant harsher conditions and less pay for the workers at Firestone, and some workers hoped the United Rubber Workers Union could provide protection from the difficult economic climate.

 Pro-union pamphlet distributed to employees at Firestone Mill in the late 1980s. It was produced by the AFL-CIO.

The materials added to the Loray Digital Archive document the pro-union and anti-union campaigns. Each side sought to attract workers to their cause with flyers, posters, stickers, buttons, and pamphlets. Initially, the anti-union forces held off the unionization attempt in 1987. Widespread media coverage turned the referendum into a political circus and leaders of the pro-union movement could not overcome area residents’ distrust. Yet a year later, Firestone workers voted to join the union in a campaign that was much more subdued. The success of pro-union forces was due in large part to the diligence of the union’s committee members working inside the mill. While the 1987 vote had turned into a regional and even national media circus, the 1988 vote remained an internal debate housed within Firestone itself. When the workers at the Firestone Mill voted on April 14th, 1988 to join the United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum and Plastic Workers by a narrow margin, it was a victory nearly sixty years in the making.  Click the link view all the materials from the 1980s union effort.


The Daily Advance, Newspaper from Elizabeth City, Now Online

The headline in The Daily Advance announcing the sudden death of the 29th President of the United States.

Over 1300 issues of Elizabeth City’s daily newspaper–The Daily Advance, provided by our partner, Pasquotank County Library, are now digitized. These issues span the time period from 1923-1927, and as indicated by the paper’s name, were published every day except Sundays. The Daily Advance was founded in 1911 and continues to be published online and in print. Elizabeth City is located in Pasquotank County on the North Carolina coast. Currently the paper also covers Currituck, Camden, Perquimans, and Chowan counties.

During the 1920s The Daily Advance covered both national and local news including politics, the economy, and other stories of note. The paper provides a lens to see the nation during the roaring ’20s through the view of coastal North Carolinians. The introduction of new products and industries, dramatic political events, shifts cultural norms, and changing role of the media can be seen in this local paper.

To browse through issues of The Daily Advance, click here. To see more materials from Pasquotank County Library, take a look at their partner page or visit their website.

New women’s fashion trends discussed in the September 14, 1925 issue of The Daily Advance


Dozens of Greene County high school yearbooks now available thanks to new partner, Greene County Museum

The 1958 Maury Mecca staff.

A new batch of yearbooks from Greene County are now available on DigitalNC, courtesy of our new partner Greene County Museum. Included in this group are eight years of Ho-Hi Echoes by Hookerton High School from 1953 to 1961, nine years of The Maury Mecca by Maury High School from 1952 to 1961, and over a dozen years of The Talisman by Walstonburg High School from 1947 to 1961. Also included is twelve issues of yearbooks by Snow Hill High School from 1949 to 1961, where the yearbook went through 3 different name changes in 6 years!

These yearbooks include individual portraits, class portraits, as well as photographs of activities, clubs, and sports. Some of the yearbooks also include histories of the classes, and “class prophecies”, where the students imagined where they would be in the future.

Follow the links below to browse the yearbooks from the schools, included in this batch:

  • Ho-Hi Echoes, 1953-1961, Hookerton High School, Hookerton, N.C.
  • The Maury Mecca, 1952-1961, Maury High School, Maury, N.C.
  • Memoirs, 1949-1952, Snow Hill High School, Snow Hill, N.C.
  • The Knoll, 1953-1954, Snow Hill High School, Snow Hill N.C.
  • The Yellow Jacket, 1955-1957, Snow Hill High School, Snow Hill N.C.
  • The Knoll, 1958-1961, Snow Hill High School, Snow Hill N.C.
  • The Talisman, 1947-1961, Walstonburg High School, Walstonburg, N.C.

To see more from our partner who provided these yearbooks, visit Greene County Museum’s partner page or check out their website.


Five More Years of Coastal Newspaper, The State Port Pilot, Added to DigitalNC!

Five more years of The State Port Pilot, a newspaper from Southport, North Carolina, are now on DigitalNC. These issues span the years 1945-1949, and were provided by our partner, the Margaret and James Harper, Jr. Library. They join previously digitized issues published from 1935-1945.

The State Port Pilot was established in 1935 and physical and digital copies continue to be distributed to this day. The newly digitized issues include articles pertaining to local news. As Southport is located in the coast, many articles concern fishing and boating. Other topics covered include local politics, the local economy, and events and happenings in the community. One weekly column includes investigations by “Our Roving Reporter.”

To browse through all digitized issues of the State Port Pilot, click here. To learn more about the Margaret and James Harper, Jr. Library, visit their partner page or take a look at their website.


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