This website uses cookies and similar technologies to understand visitor experiences. By using this website, you consent to cookie usage in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
The first batch of photographs depicting student life and academics at Central Carolina Community College are now online. The photographs date from the 1960s to the 1990s and show primarily students studying agriculture, accounting, automotive mechanics, and broadcasting. This group of photographs was the first of many that we will be digitizing for Central Carolina, which is located in Sanford, North Carolina in Lee County.
To learn more about our partner Central Carolina Community College and see other materials they have had digitized, visit their partner page here. To view more photographs contributed by institutions all over the state, visit our Images of North Carolina collection.
From the 1930-1931 booklet, a listing of the topics of discussion since 1898.
85 more years of the Wilson Book Club programs are now available online, thanks to our partner, the Wilson County Public Library. We have previously posted about the earliest of these programs, dating back to 1901. With the addition of 93 years of programs starting in 1911 and going through 2005, one can now have a good glimpse into changing interests in the literary world and how book clubs operate over the past 100 years. The earliest programs in this new batch often had a subject for that whole year, whether it was based on genre or topic, such as “The Netherlands” or “Modern Irish Literature“. Later years tended to have much more diverse set of subjects across the year, although on occasion still have a primary focus for the year. The 1975-1976 program reflects the bicentennial being celebrated and many of months have a colonial era focus. In addition to the information on the books read, a listing of the club members and who hosted each month is also included in the programs.
Perhaps a question many of us were asking in 2005.
To view all the book club programs, visit here. And to learn more about our partner Wilson County Public Library and view their digitized materials, visit their partner page.
The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center has added another new partner, the Brevard Music Center. Materials from the Center that are now available online include photographs that date back to the Center’s origins as a music camp at Davidson College and every issue of Overture, the program for the camp and festival that has occurred every year since 1945.
Brevard Music Center was started by James Christian Pfohl as Davidson Music School for Boys in 1936. The school moved to it’s present location in Brevard in 1944 and became coeducational and named the Transylvania Music Camp. In 1946, a music festival was added along to the summer camp and in 1955 the school and festival became the Brevard Music Center. Over the years has trained hundreds of students in music, from playing instruments to singing. Many big names have played at the Center, including Midori Ito and its’ current artistic director, Keith Lockhart. The NCDHC is excited to add such an important part of North Carolina’s music education history to DigitalNC for a wide audience to enjoy.
To learn more about the Brevard Music Center and view the resources that have been digitized, visit their contributor page here.
You can now learn lots of intimate details about the lives of those in the Boiling Springs area in the early 1980s in The Foothills View, a community newspaper digitized by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, courtesy of our partner Gardner Webb University. Issues from the 1981 to 1984 are now online. The paper, which was published weekly, included national and local news sections, as well as detailed community comings and goings for each of the local communities around Boiling Springs, such as Lavonia, Trinity, and Mt. Pleasant.
A tongue in cheek look at some of the letters to the editor The Foothills View got in their mailbag.
News about Earl Scruggs, a Boiling Springs native, visiting home in 1984
News out of Mt. Pleasant on March 19, 1981
To view more materials from our partner, Gardner Webb University, visit their partner page here. And to view more newspapers from across North Carolina, visit our North Carolina Newspapers Collection.
Featured in the latest batch of architecture slides from Rockingham Community College to be digitized by DigitalNC are several well known homes, including the Hermitage, Chinqua-Penn Plantation, and the David Settle Reid house. Also included are mills, barns, and even a saloon. Taken in the early 1980s, these photographs include multiple exterior as well as interior views of the buildings. Some of buildings still stand today and others no longer exist, but location, owners’ names, and building dates are included in the descriptions of the photographs.
Class registration at Winston Salem State University, 1973. From 1973 The New Ram
As college students across North Carolina head back to class it seems like a good time to take a peek in our NC College Yearbooks collection and see what registering for classes used to look like before we were able to just sit in our dorm room, or coffee shop, or be halfway across the world to sign up on our computers. Until the early 1990s, to sign up for classes involved a lengthy process of waiting in very long lines and hoping that no one in front of you got into the class you wanted or needed before you did. As the images below show, the overwhelming feeling among students about this process was pure frustration. Today’s students can be glad this is one college tradition they do not experience anymore!
Registration day was a feature in community colleges as well. This is from Wayne Community College’s 1974 yearbook, Insights.
Registration frustration from UNC-Wilmington’s 1966 Fledgling yearbook
Utilizing the gym floor to figure out classes during registration, from UNC-Chapel Hill’s 1982 Yackety yack
Registration was a “hassel!!” at NC Agricultural and Technical State University in 1974. from 1974 Ayantee
To view more college yearbooks from North Carolina, visit the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s NC Yearbooks collection here, and welcome back to school students!
Students at Richard B. Harrison High School on their way to class in 1966.
Thanks to our new partner, the Johnston County Heritage Center, 146 Johnston County yearbooks from 16 different high schools are now on DigitalNC. Many of the high schools were closed when Johnston County consolidated and integrated the school system in the 1960s, including three African American schools.
Planning the cover of Smithfield High School’s newspaper, 1964
The NC Digital Heritage Center has just added more materials online from Wayne County Public Library including scrapbooks covering 4-H activities in Wayne County, Ray Scarborough, a major league baseball player from Mount Olive, and yearbooks from several Wayne County high schools including Goldsboro High School and Nahunta High School.
The 4-H scrapbooks are from the 1950s and show the focus on pigs in Wayne County’s 4-H program at the time. The scrapbooks also show in detail the amount of record keeping that 4-H members had to maintain to participant in the livestock and crop competitions. The scrapbooks include photographs, worksheets, and essays on “What 4-H Means to Me.”
To view more materials from Wayne County Public Library on DigitalNC, visit here.
As the North Carolina heat continues to broil us all, many are sitting in our offices daydreaming about our upcoming vacations or perhaps ones that have just past. North Carolinians who worked in factories across the state were much the same in the middle of the 20th century. Company newspapers, which shared news about the company itself, the town the factory was in, and the people who worked for the company, would often feature vacation announcements in the summer months to report on where everyone was returning from after a nice week off. DigitalNC has several company newspapers available online, including the Erwin Chatter and Firestone News.
The Erwin Chatter, was published by employees of the Erwin Cotton Mills Company in Cooleemee, North Carolina. It appears that at the mill, everyone took “vacation week” at the same time. The paper reported, often with a bit of humor, the travels of everyone.
The Firestone News, put out by the employees of the Firestone Tire Factory in Gastonia, North Carolina, also featured updates on employees vacations, separated out by the department they worked in, and sometimes included the employee’s job description as well.
So if you haven’t figured out vacation yet, perhaps these news clips can give you a few ideas. Myrtle Beach appears to be a particular favorite, or perhaps you could motor through the North Carolina mountains and go fishing. To view more North Carolina newspapers, visit here.
Best All-Around in the 1959 Jamestown High senior class
The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center has added a new partner institution, the Old Jamestown School Association. Through them, we have added 17 yearbooks from Jamestown High School to DigitalNC, from their first yearbook in 1940 until 1959, when Jamestown High School was renamed Ragsdale High School and moved into a new building across town. The old Jamestown High School building now serves as the location of the Jamestown Public Library.
Visit the North Carolina Yearbooks collection on DigitalNC for more high school and college yearbooks from around the state.
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.
