Friends of the UNCG Libraries

The MFA Writing Program at UNC Greensboro, The Greensboro Review, and The UNCG Center for Creative Writing in the Arts will host a fiction reading by Fred Chappell on Thursday, March 18th at 7 PM in the UNCG Faculty Center on College Avenue. The reading will celebrate the release of Chappell’s latest book, Ancestors and Others . It is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing. Fred Chappell is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and fiction. He has received many major prizes, including the Bollingen Prize in Poetry from Yale University and the Award in Literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

For decades the research and academic libraries across the UNC system have leveraged their collections and those of other research libraries in the region to reduce costs and make the greatest range of materials available to faculty and students. Now, with one easy system on the web, patrons can search the library catalog of all 17 institutions in the system and have the materials they need delivered in days. UNC Library Express makes library materials across the state easy to find and quick to obtain. Students, faculty and staff at UNCG can search available resources across the system through UNC Library Express by starting at library.uncg.edu and following the library catalog links. Books and other item are delivered by UPS Ground service, usually within three days of the request. The end result: UNC Library Express increases the number and variety of books and other resources available to all members of the UNC system community, whether they are teaching or learning on campus or th...

Please join us in the Virginia Dare Room, Alumni House, at 7:00 pm on Thursday, March 4, for a lecture by UNC Chapel Hill History professor Heather Williams. Dr. Williams' talk, " Help Me to Find My People: Searching for Family After Slavery Ended ," is the final lecture in our " Forever Free " series. We were especially interested in bringing Dr. Williams to campus as our last speaker as her current research focuses on the immediate after effects of emancipation on Southern black families, picking up where our exhibit ends. Dr. Williams, whose first book, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom , received numerous awards, has been at Chapel Hill since 2004. Before turning to academia, Dr. Williams taught at the high school level, winning a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. Dr. Williams also had a distinguished legal career, working for the Department of Justice, the US Attorney's Office, and Miracle Makers. She is c...

" Did Abe Lincoln Really Free the Slaves? " Join us as noted legal scholar Dr. Paul Finkelman provides his perspective on Lincoln's role in ending slavery in America. Dr. Finkelman, who has appeared in such documentaries as Ken Burns' Thomas Jefferson as well as Up for Grabs, a documentary about Barry Bonds' 73rd home run ball, is an expert on Abraham Lincoln and nineteenth-century American history. The editor of the comprehensive The Political Lincoln: An Encyclopedia (2009), Finkelman also served as an advisor to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. Dr. Finkelman was a plenary speaker at the 150th anniversary commemoration of John Brown's raid of Harper Ferry last Fall. He also served as an expert witness in Harvard Law School's retrial of the Dred Scott v. Sanford case, an event that drew the participation of Kenneth Starr and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Dr. Finkelman's lecture is the fourth in the University Libraries' ...

Remember Pollyanna, Trixie Belden, and Nancy Drew? They, along with their sisters in American children's fiction, have been collected and preserved as part of the UNCG University Libraries' Girls Books in Series Collection. This remarkable compilation of serial literature (1840s-1970s), which includes nearly 2,800 volumes from more than 500 series, is the strongest in the country. In out stacks, researchers are able to trace the history of American girlhood as depicted in the pages of these well-loved stories. The Friends of the UNCG Libraries invite you to join us for a tea and a talk about this jewel of a collection. Professor Joe Sutliff Sanders, a professor from Cal State San Bernardino, is an active user of the UNCG Libraries' Special Collections. He will share his research in a talk entitled, "Classic Girls, Modern Stories." Tea and cookies will follow, along with an exhibit of many of the books. Please join us from 2-4 pm in the Hodges Reading Room of Jack...

Forever Free Exhibit Special Events January 31-February 7: Sunday, January 31 --Former Museum Director Bill Moore will speak on "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: The Greensboro Connection" at the Greensboro Historical Museum at 3:00 p.m. ( In the event of inclement winter weather this weekend, as predicted, contact the Museum to see if the event is still on: 336-373-2043). The Museum, not UNCG, will make the call on whether the event goes on as scheduled. Thursday, February 4: Lecture by Dr. Thomas J. Brown, University of South Carolina,  “The Civil War in Modern Eyes.” Virginia Dare Room, Alumni House, UNCG campus, 7 p.m. Sunday, February 7: African American Music in the Time of Lincoln Greensboro councilwoman and “Song” Storyteller T. Dianne Bellamy-Small & friends will present an inspirational performance of black spirituals of the 19th century.  Central Library, Greensboro Public Library, 219 N. Church St., 3 p.m. From January 25 through March 5, the Univers...

Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln's Journey to Emancipation exhibit is now installed in the Jackson Library Reading Room at UNC Greensboro. I hope you will enjoy it. From January 25 through March 5, the University Libraries plays host to a very special exhibit: "Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln's Journey to Emancipation." The exhibit, which fills a wall of the Jackson Library Reading Room, explores Lincoln’s gradual transformation from an antislavery moderate into “The Great Emancipator." In conjunction with the exhibit, the University Libraries are bringing several speakers to campus, with more in February and early March, and our partners at the Greensboro Historical Museum and Greensboro Public Library also have events scheduled to coincide with the exhibit. Next week's Forever Free program events : Tuesday, January 26 - Dr. Loren Schweninger , UNCG History Department, "Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and the End of Slavery." at 7:00 pm in the Virgi...