Friends of the UNCG Libraries

Christopher Hodgkins, Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has been awarded a $250,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarly Editions Grant. The money will be used to support co-editor Hodgkins and Robert Whalen of Northern Michigan University (NMU), in producing George Herbert: Complete Prose, with Latin and Greek Verse. A once-in-several-generations project, Hodgkins’s and Whalen’s edition will provide a foundational resource for Herbert studies. When completed, it will include digital captures of all known manuscripts and first print editions of Herbert’s works—all of the latter housed in the Special Collections of UNCG’s Walter Clinton Jackson Library. The edition also will present original-spelling transcriptions linked to the high-resolution images of each manuscript or print page; edited texts, partially modernized; translations of the Latin and Greek works; and a scholarly apparatus that includes a full set of textual and critical...

Do you have a piece of Greensboro’s history in your possession?  Something that tells your story, or that of your family or neighborhood?  A photograph?  A document?  A letter? If so, bring it along as you come to the Hayes-Taylor YMCA to see what the Achievers Program there has been doing to learn about and save Greensboro history in digital form so that it can be seen and used by future generations. On Saturday June 20 from 11 am until 2:00 pm, students who have been participating since February in a project to collect and digitize Greensboro history will hold a free event to show others what they’ve been doing. There will be a multi-poster display of some of the interesting and important historical materials that have been discovered since February. The “Digitizing Greensboro History” staff and students also invite the public to bring a cherished letter, document or photograph (individual, family, an older image of Greensboro or perhaps their neighborhood...

The University Libraries at UNCG have received $23,500 in funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to support the UNCG Hayes Taylor YMCA Digital Explorers project.  Seventeen projects from IMLS's Sparks! Ignition Grants were funded nationwide. As a result, the Libraries' Digital Project Unit will partner with the Hayes-Taylor YMCA and at-risk teens in East and Southeast Greensboro in the process of identifying, cataloging, and digitally preserving historically valuable community materials. Student participants will learn about Greensboro history, especially local African American history in East and Southeast Greensboro, and receive hands-on training in archival practices and making materials accessible online. Seventeen projects from IMLS's Sparks! Ignition Grants were funded nationwide.  Sparks grants  support the deployment, testing, and evaluation of promising and groundbreaking new tools, products, services, or organizational practices of librari...

Greensboro history buffs - start your engines. The Textiles, Teachers, and Troops website, written about earlier on this blog is now available for public use.  After celebrating the launch of the website with a program at the Greensboro Historical Museum on Tuesday that featured a visit by North Carolina's Secretary of Cultural Resources Susan Kluttz and a keynote by Deputy Secretary of Archives and History Kevin Cherry, the partners on the project are ready for you to take a look at the website and provide feedback, especially on resources that you find especially useful.  Tell us what you learned and how the website helps you gain a better understanding of Greensboro's history.  Please email us at ttt@digitalgreensboro.org . Here are some photos from the launch. (L-R) State Librarian Cal Shepard; Deputy Secretary of Archives and History Kevin Cherry; Greensboro Historical Museum Director Carol Hart; Secretary of Cultural Resources Susan Kluttz;, Dean of Unive...

Greensboro--Elm St. at RR Crossing Looking North from a Greensboro College scrapbook, of student Mabel Pitts, circa 1920.   Courtesy of Greensboro College How did Greensboro become the city it is today?   From 1880-1945, three distinct forces helped transform the city: textiles, teachers, and troops.   Now, six important area institutions have come together to create a free online tool that documents that transformation and makes it available to the public.   Two upcoming programs will highlight that tool and are free and open to the public. On Tuesday, April 8, a public launch of the digital project Textiles, Teachers, and Troops: Greensboro 1880-1945 will be held at the Greensboro Historical Museum at 7 p.m. In addition to demonstration of the project website and a brief outline of Greensboro history during the period, Dr. Kevin Cherry, Deputy Secretary of Archives and History in the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources will speak. ...

For the past few years the University Libraries have invited  a UNCG faculty member whose work relates closely to the Libraries  to provide a lecture for us.  Dr. Jennifer Keith of the English Department worked with the Libraries' Electronic Resources and Information Technology Department to develop the Anne Finch Digital Archive. At 3:30 pm on April 7 in the Hodges Reading Room on the second floor of Jackson Library, Dr. Keith will discuss the significance of Anne Finch's work, the collaboration with ERIT, and the uniqueness of the project. 

 Preserving Local History Grant Team (L-R: Stephen Catlett, Rachel Sanders, Megan Coker and David Gwynn) David Gwynn, with a big assist from colleague Stephen Catlett, has secured a 2013-2014 Community-Based Research Grant for a total of $3000 from UNCG's Office of Leadership and Service Learning. Entitled "Preserving Local History: A Field-Based Digitization Pilot Project," this project is designed to begin a conversation with and among a diverse group of community organizations and groups about the existence, status, condition and digitization possibilities of their archives or historical/library materials. The goal of this pilot project is to develop strategies, methodologies and “best practices” in order to begin a process, using the resources and expertise of UNCG, to preserve this rich history in a digital format, for easier dissemination to their constituencies and eventually to the wider public. Preserving Local History: A Field-Based Digitizatio...

UNCG's  Digital Library on American Slavery, which recently added a collection of runaway slave ads , has been cited favorably in some recent news stories: African-American genealogy research difficult, but possible http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/art_life/display_features.htm?StoryID=147139 New database lets Britons find slave-owning ancestors http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_22683198/new-database-lets-britons-find-slave-owning-ancestors

The following post was prepared by Dr. Chris Hodgkins of the English Department: Dr. Robert Whalen When Robert Whalen of Northern Michigan University began to explore how he might apply emerging digital technology to the English poetry of Metaphysical master George Herbert (1593-1633), he thought with youthful optimism that such a project might take, oh, a year or two. After all, the complete printed works of Herbert fit into only one volume. How long could it take to transcribe, encode, and annotate the lyric poems of The Temple (1633)? Thirteen years later, he knows. The Digital Temple , more than a decade in the making, is now available from University of Virginia Press/Rotunda, America’s leading academic digital publisher, where it keeps company with the digital papers of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and is being hailed by advance reviewers as the state of the art in digital editions. http://digitaltemple.rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/ Dr. Christopher Hodgkins...

The University Libraries have been informed by the State Library of North Carolina that it has received a 2012-2013 LSTA Project Digitization Grant in the amount of $203,910. The grant will fund a project called Textiles, Teachers, and Troops: Greensboro, North Carolina, 1881-1945. Digital Projects Coordinator David Gwynn, is the principal investigator for the grant. Textiles, Teachers, and Troops: Greensboro, North Carolina, 1881-1945 will make available some 165,000 digital images including photographs, manuscripts, rare books, scrapbooks, printed materials, and oral histories documenting the social and cultural development of Greensboro. For the first time, all five colleges and universities in Greensboro, along with the Greensboro Historical Museum, will be collaborating on a project to make primary source materials available online. The participating colleges and universities are UNCG, N.C. A&T State University, Guilford College, Bennett College and Greensboro College....