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Thanks to the staff at the Outer Banks History Center, we now have a complete run of the 1941 Tyrrell Tribune available online. These papers were scanned at our office in Elizabeth City.
Search results showing the 1941 front pages let you easily see which issues are from microfilm and which from print.
North Carolina has an astounding amount of newspaper on microfilm thanks to efforts of the State Archives, newspaper publishers, local libraries, and other cultural heritage institutions. One thing we really love to do is use DigitalNC to join together microfilmed issues with print issues that have never been microfilmed. The Tyrrell Tribune is one of these cases.
For us, digitizing from microfilm is more cost-effective than digitizing from print. In addition, many papers that were microfilmed were disposed of when organizations were unable to afford storage and care. Microfilmed copies may be the only versions still available. However, there are cases where print issues held by our partners fill in for what was never microfilmed and the 1941 Tyrrell Tribune is a great example.
Published out of Columbia, N.C., the Tribune covers news about local government, coastal industry, agriculture, and events. You can see all of the issues that we have available from the Tribunehere. All items we’ve scanned for the Outer Banks History Center are available through their contributor page. Everything we have about Tyrrell County can be found on the Tyrrell County page.
This November 15, 1961 front page of The State Port Pilot has a picture of the catch from a local fishing trip and an image of a Kingtown Community Directory sign that lists the names of Kingtown N.C. residents.
Issues of The State Port Pilot newspaper dating from 1950-1962 have been added to DigitalNC.org thanks to funding provided by the Southport Historical Society. These join issues from 1935-1949.
The State Port Pilot, “a good newspaper in a good community,” documents Brunswick County NC life. Agriculture (especially tobacco) and fishing are frequent front page topics during this time period, and there are “local catch” photos at least every month. Front page news often includes information about local development, such as the construction of the Sunny Point army depot. You will also find coverage of some of the county’s most devastating events of this timer period, including Hurricane Hazel in 1954, and a National Airlines plane crash that killed 34 people in 1960.
On the front page of issues from through April 1957 you’ll find a regular column entitled “Our Roving Reporter.” This column was written by W. B. Keziah, also known as Bill Keziah, and it was published right up until his death. According to his obituary Keziah was the newspaper’s founder who transitioned to a local reporter known for his commentary and deep love for Brunswich County. Keziah’s columns include everything from the blooming of local camellias, to visits from state and local dignitaries, to gossip, to little-known county and town history. He was a native of Waxhaw and, as a deaf individual, had attended the NC School for the Deaf in Morganton. Numerous comments about his contributions to the county can be found in issues of the Pilot published around the time of his passing.
People frequently ask us to recommend digitization equipment as well as content management systems* or ways to display their files online. To help connect more people to their peers, we sent our partners a survey asking them the following:
List the make and model of any equipment you have that scans print materials, photographs, slides, and/or negatives.
What local or remotely hosted software does your organization use to keep track of and/or share your digital images?
Thanks to the 45 institutions who responded, we now have a great list on hand. If you contact us we can connect you directly with those who said they’d be happy to share experiences and information.
Keep reading for lists of all of the equipment and software mentioned listed in alphabetical order. If you work in a cultural heritage organization in NC and don’t see your digitization equipment and/or system mentioned below, leave a comment and we will add it.
*A content management system is software that will store and organize files, usually with functionality that helps people make use of the files like search, online display, etc.
Here’s the list of platforms mentioned:
Content Management Systems / Online Platforms
Alma Digital/ Primo VE
CONTENTdm
Cumulus
DigitalNC (which uses TIND, WordPress, and Open ONI)
DSpace**
Drupal
Ex Libris Alma Digital
Fedora + Hyrax**
Flickr
Internet Archive
Islandora
JSTOR Forum
KeepThinking Qi**
Laserfishe
LibGuides
Omeka
Pass It Down
Past Perfect
PTFS Knowvation
Quartex**
Re:discovery Proficio
WordPress
** Not represented in the survey responses but we know folks who use these.
Comments: Some of these are hosted by vendors; others are hosted by the organization. There are also sites listed here that might not be considered content management systems but that organizations use for online sharing. This list does not include social media sites where files might be shared, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. It also doesn’t get into details for those who have built their own systems (typically very well-resourced institutions). If you’d like some more guidance about choosing, check out this post: What Should You Do With Your Scanned Photos?
Here’s the list of equipment mentioned:
Flatbed Scanners
Epson 10000XL, 11000XL, 12000XL
Epson DS-50000
Epson Perfection V19, V39, V370, V550
Epson Perfection V600, V700, V800
HP Scanjet G4050
HP ScanJetPro 2500 f1
Large Format Sheet-fed Scanners
HP DesignJet T2500
Overhead Scanners / Book Scanners
Bookeye 3, 5
Czur ET18 Pro
Fujitsu ScanSnap 600
ST600 Book Scanner
Zeutschel OS 12000 A1, Q1
Overhead Camera Systems
Phase One iXH 100MP camera + digital back
Sony A7R IV camera with mount
Negative and Slide Scanners
Hasselblad Flextight X5
Nikon Super CoolScan 9000 ED
PowerSlide 5000
ZONOZ FS-3 22MP All-in-1 Film & Slide Converter Scanner w/Speed-Load Adapters for 35mm
Microfilm Scanners
ST ViewScan 3, 4
Multi-Function Devices
Epson-WF-3540
Hewlett Packard Color LaserJet M476 copier with scanner
HP Officejet Pro X576dw
Konica Minolta bizhub 227 copier/scanner
Kyocera Taskalfa 4053ci
Savin IM 2500, MP 2004ex
Sharp MX-4071, MX-C304W
TASKalfa 3051ci
Xerox Documate 3220 desktop scanner
Xerox Workcentre 6655i, 7535
Comments: Some of these are staff use, some are available to the public, and some serve both groups. If you’re interested in what we use, take a look at this page: Scanning and Digitization Equipment
Shepard-Pruden Memorial Library in Edenton has funded digitization of an additional 19 years of the Chowan Herald. This new content means that you can now search the entire run from the first issue in 1934 through June 2001.
The new issues from 1983-2001 cover local political and town government news, tourism, business and residential development in the area, local events and community organizations, crime and local disasters. One of the larger construction projects represented in this timespan is the replacement Albemarle Sound Bridge. You can see news about the conception, construction, and dedication of the bridge (including an article on the partial collapse during construction which delayed its completion). (Here’s an article about the original bridge, which you can read about through earlier issues of the Herald.)
You can search and browse the entire run of The Chowan Herald on its landing page. Other materials related to Chowan County that are available on our site, including newspapers, city directories, and more, can be searched and browsed on the county landing page.
The first 8 years of The Front Page newspaper, from 1979-1986, are now on DigitalNC. The Front Page was published in Raleigh for twenty-six years covering “news and happenings of interest to gay people.” The paper covered national and local news impacting and of interest to the LGBTQ+ community. There are ads for local businesses that were safe spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals, and a community calendar listed events. There’s also a Q&A column where letters from readers all over the state wrote in with problems or questions to recieve a broad spectrum of personal advice.
Q-Notes, a prominent Charlotte area LGBTQ+ newspaper and the one Front Page merged with in 2006, published a retrospective of The Front Page and an interview with the Page‘s publisher Jim Baxter in the July 29, 2006 issue. Baxter penned an article in IndyWeek shortly after the paper’s final issue, and it describes parts of his career and the history of Front Page.
The paper has been added with kind permission from the publishers and thanks to efforts by staff at the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Duke University. Digitization of this paper was funded by an IDEA Action Grant from UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries. Archived issues of Q-notes are available from our site, and you can view more current content at their site.
Since 1751, North Carolina newspapers have been one of the most valuable resources for researching our state’s history. They are also one of the most prolific, and demand for newspaper digitization is an area where we struggle even making a dent.
Thanks to funding from the State Library of North Carolina and a new partnership with G. R. Little Library at Elizabeth City State University, that dent just got a little bigger. ECSU is now home to our first satellite location, and the staff there are focused on print newspaper digitization.
In addition to meeting demand, setting up a satellite location in the eastern part of the state will diminish travel time for eastern partners interested in getting papers from their collections online. All materials will be scanned on a new large format scanner by the digitization technicians at ECSU. Then, after the images have metadata, they’ll be sent to Chapel Hill where they’ll be uploaded to the newspaper site on our page.
Our ECSU colleagues are currently working on papers from Northampton and Bertie counties. We’ll be working with our easternmost partners for more materials to scan in the coming months.
Zaina Goggins, Vicky Tillett, and Barry Ward work with a new scanner at ECSU Libraries.
Crystal Lee Sutton and Richard Koritz in Red Square, 1984
Crystal Lee Sutton was a union activist whose story rose to prominence after she was fired from her position at a Roanoke Rapids, N.C. textile plant, J. P. Stevens, because she supported the establishment of a union and advocated for better working conditions and pay. Her story was documented in the movie Norma Rae, and Sutton’s life changed greatly due to the fame that followed the movie’s success. She went on to support unionization efforts in a variety of industries during the rest of her life. Sutton passed away in 2009.
On behalf of Alamance Community College we have digitized additional materials from the Crystal Lee Sutton collection, which was donated directly to the College’s Library before her death.
This batch of materials contains some of Sutton’s school report cards, correspondence to various supporters, newspaper clippings about her activism and the movie, unionization booklets, and a few photos of Sutton. There are also quite a few of her speeches, both handwritten and typewritten, including those she lists as the first speeches she gave after being fired in 1973.
Due to copyright or privacy concerns, not all of the materials from the Sutton collection are online. If you are interested in those items, take a look at this list. You can contact the Alamance Community College Library for access to the items listed there.
You can view the most recent batch along with all of the items we have been able to share online on the Crystal Lee Sutton exhibit page.
We’re pleased to share that you can now search more issues of the Elkin Tribune on DigitalNC, thanks to a nomination from the Elkin Public Library. The years added span 1916-1949, but the majority of the issues are from 1942-1949, with only a few scattered issues from the earlier years.
In the issues added from 1931 you’ll see a lot of coverage of the new Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital, which still operates in Elkin today. The issues from 1942-1949 cover World War II and its immediate aftermath. There are lists of individuals who served from both Surry and Yadkin counties in the May 8, 1945 issue linked at the beginning of this post.
You can view all of the issues we’ve published from The Elkin Tribune on the newspaper’s landing page. To view all of the items we’ve worked on relating to Surry County, check out the county’s landing page.
The front page of the February 11, 1957 issue of the Chapel Hill News Leader features a snapshot of a mule that kept straying onto the property of the local mayor.
We’ve worked with the Chapel Hill Historical Society to share additional materials from their collections. This batch includes more issues of the following newspapers:
The issues of the News Leader discuss town and county news, as well as a hefty amount of news related to UNC-Chapel Hill. Items related to politics and education frequently take center stage on the front page.
L-R Ashlie Brewer (NCDHC) scans while Lisa Gregory (NCDHC) looks at materials with Brian Forehand (Camden County Heritage Museum)
We have an exciting milestone to announce – with the addition of the Camden County Heritage Museum and the Dismal Swamp Canal Welcome Center we have now worked with at least one partner organization in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties. NCDHC staff received a warm welcome in Camden County at the end of August when we traveled there to scan materials for both of these organizations.
Our post today shares the materials we scanned from the Museum (stay tuned for a future post about the Welcome Center’s materials). From photos to maps to brochures to handwritten research notes, the Museum selected a variety of items that document important aspects of the county’s history. Some of the longer and more detailed items are mentioned below:
We were especially interested to read the typhoid fever and diptheria vaccine announcement shown to the right, which seems especially timely during the current pandemic. Note that the author called out the races separately and that people had to go to a specific location based on their assigned race.
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.
Thanks to the staff at the Outer Banks History Center, we now have a complete run of the 1941 Tyrrell Tribune available online. These papers were scanned at our office in Elizabeth City. 
The 
Since 1751, North Carolina newspapers have been one of the most valuable resources for researching our state’s history. They are also one of the most prolific, and demand for newspaper digitization is an area where we struggle even making a dent.
