Friends of the UNCG Libraries

University Libraries’ held its Fourth Annual Members’ Choice event on April 10, allowing Jackson Society members to vote on their preferred selection of books to be added to the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives . The additions twill help grow the collection as it strives to meet the needs of current and future faculty and students, as well as the broader community. Jennifer Motszko, Manuscripts Archivist, gave a short presentation on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol . This first edition, first issue, second state, with red and blue title page and green end papers with illustrations by John Leech and published by Chapman & Hall in 1843 was an instant success, reportedly selling all 6,000 copies of the first edition on the first day of publication. Chapman & Hall, a British publishing house founded in the first half of the 19th century, also published William Thackeray and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. After A Christmas Carol , Dickens woul...

The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project (WVHP) began with a luncheon in 1998 to honor the unrecognized military service of women, including many Woman's College (now UNCG) alumnae. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the WHVP and the 125th anniversary of UNCG, University Libraries will be celebrating the history of the WVHP and hearing from some of the veterans who are a part of the project. Thanks to the generosity of Glenda Schillinger, UNCG alumna and U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps veteran, tickets to the November luncheon will be free. As always, the luncheon is open to the public and all are invited. One of the primary focuses of the project is oral histories. This year, 17 new oral histories were added to the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, including those from Megan Mead, Rachel Puckett, Barbara Marshall, Deborah Branson, Kate Germano, Caroline Cleveland and Amanda Westfall Dayman. The WVHP 20th anniversary luncheon will...

On September 13, Abraham Lincoln's  Political Debates Between the Honorable Abraham Lincoln and the Honorable Stephen A. Douglas was presented to Chancellor Gilliam to commemorate the 125th anniversary of UNC Greensboro. The book was chosen by the members of the Walter Clinton Jackson Society at the Third Annual Members Choice event in April along with the other volumes that were added to the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections & University Archives. When published as a presidential campaign tool in April 1860, the collected speeches became a best-seller, and by the time of Lincoln’s official nomination, some 30,000 copies were in circulation. The book is a first edition and was published in 1860. The debates were Lincoln's springboard to fame and feature the publisher's original embossed cloth and gilt engraved spine. The Lincoln–Douglas debates are unquestionably the most famous, and most important, of such confrontations to have been staged in the hi...

The Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections & University Archives  recently welcomed the addition of Ennio Bolognini's personal papers and artifacts to the UNCG Cello Music Collection. Bolognini is the 13 th  cellist represented in the Cello Music Collection, which is the largest single holding of cello music-related material in the world. While the collection is small, it contains a few manuscripts, musical sketches and caricatures drawn by Bolognini, articles, concert programs and photographs relating to his life and career. Ennio Bolognini (1893-1979). Image courtesy of UNCG Special Collections & University Archives Bolognini was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on November 7, 1893. His mother was a prominent singer and opera coach at the Teatro Colón. His father was an Italian correspondent for the Paris-based newspaper Le Figaro and an amateur cellist, who taught his son the instrument. Bolognini made his debut at the age of 12 and soon enrolled i...

University Libraries’ held its Third Annual Members’ Choice Event on April 20. This exclusive event for the Jackson Society, allows members to vote on their preferred selection of books to be added to the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives . These additions, many of which are first editions, will commemorate the 125 th anniversary of UNCG and help grow the collection as it strives to meet the needs of current and future faculty and students, as well as the broader community. The items recently added to UNCG’s Special Collections and University Archives are listed below: •          Isaac Johnson, Slavery Days in Old Kentucky                                 •          Thomas H. Jones, The Experience of Thomas H. J...

Jenna Townend is pursuing her Ph.D. at Loughborough University and was recently awarded the Special Collections and University Archives’ Research Travel Grant. She visited UNCG's University Libraries earlier in 2017 to study the seventeenth century literary borrowings from George Herbert’s “The Temple” (1633) and to conduct comparative bibliographic research into the watermarks and ornaments of six texts published by Philemon and Robert Stephens. University Libraries offers one research travel grant per year to support the work of a researcher who utilizes the holdings of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives. Collections include rare books, manuscripts, women’s literature, cello music, University archives and Betty Carter Women Veterans Historical Project. The research travel grant is intended to pay for travel and lodging costs associated with a research trip to Greensboro, North Carolina. Graduate students, post-docs, teaching faculty and indepe...

The University Libraries' Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA), along with the Library at Wake Forest University, recently hosted a "Hop into History" event at Gibbs Hundred Brewing Company in downtown Greensboro.  Forty UNCG alumni, Libraries' staff and others came to view exhibits based on a Halloween theme. Items included creepy dust jackets, the infamous McIver death mask and a William Jennings Bryan life mask. Hop into History is designed to engage the greater community to learn about the collections in SCUA.

On September 22, 2016 the Libraries celebrated receiving a $1,000 grant from  Sisters in Crime , a national organization devoted to supporting women crime writers.  The Libraries will use the funds to enhance the  Robbie Emily Dunn Collection of American Detective Fiction  in Special Collections and University Archives. Pictured here are members of the  North Carolina Triad Chapter  of Sisters in Crime presenting the check to Dr. Keith Gorman, Assistant Dean for Special Collections and University Archives and Kathryn Crowe, Interim Dean. Chris Roerden, President of the chapter is first row, far right.

Readers of American Libraries , one of the profession's most important and respected journals, opened their June issue to read an article about recruiting and retaining volunteers in libraries.  Featured prominently in the article is the program in the University Libraries' Special Collections and University Archives. Assistant Dean Keith Gorman and archivist Kathelene Smith are quoted throughout the article. Pictured here is former Archivist and current volunteer Herman Trojanowksi.

Q: You have received a $19,876 Literacy and Lifelong Learning Grant from Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds administered by the State Library of North Carolina.  Can you tell us briefly what the project is about?  GORMAN: This project represents our response to a perceived teacher need in the community.  There has been a shift in emphasis towards teaching with primary documents (letters, diaries, documents, photographs, etc.)..  New learning technology and new online digital collections makes this type of teaching possible, but it lacks the excitement of touching the real item.  In some cases, the digital copy may put some additional distance between the researcher and the actual item.  Students and teachers involved in this project will be able to see what’s in an archive.  Moreover, participants will be able to meet and work with UNCG subject experts.  These skilled professionals will offer a wonderful and unique perspective t...

Dr. Keith Gorman Ms. Beth Ann Koelsch If you watch C-SPAN programming this weekend, you’ll see some familiar UNCG faces, including two from the University Libraries.  The UNCG related programming will air Feb. 21-22. Recently, C-SPAN came to the UNCG campus and interviewed two faculty members of the Special Collections and University Archives Department in Jackson Library. They also interviewed two faculty members and one emeritus faculty member in the History Department. Ms. Beth Ann Koelsch is curator of the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project in the library’s Hodges Special Collections & University Archives. “Since it’s for C-SPAN2 “the book channel,” I pulled books from the collection including memoirs, books written about particular companies (for example, “The 149th WAAC Post HQ Company, 1940-1943: Our Story”), comics, books on the history of women in the military and books about the role of women in the military,” she said. Dr. Keith Gor...

As an increasing number faculty at UNCG see it, those treasures stored in the Special Collections and University Archives are tools for helping UNCG students learn, express themselves, and develop their skills.  Making available and engaging students, faculty and researchers in the active use of primary sources is a major goal of the Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) Department, headed by Dr. Keith Gorman, himself a historian. During 2014, the Department worked with or made presentations to 84 classes and presentations involving more than 1400 students, and the engagement is growing each year.   Given our collections and the nature of the subjects, one might expect classes with students in History, English, or Art, but other departments and classes represented include African American Studies; Women and Gender Studies; Photography; Kinesiology; Music; Education; Interior Architecture; Consumer Apparel and Retail; Food; and Latin. This growing use of s...

photo by Carly Glazier Photography A conference room in UNCG’s Jackson Library has been named for retiring U.S. Representative Howard Coble.  The J. Howard Coble Conference Room is located on the third floor of Jackson Library, where the Congressman’s papers reside in the Special Collections and University Archives.  “We are thrilled and honored to have Congressman Coble's archive at the UNCG libraries,” says Dean of University Libraries Rosann Bazirjian. “Researchers, faculty and students will make wonderful use of his valuable papers and we are so proud that we can provide access to and preserve his collection for generations to come.” "We are so honored by this very generous donation," says Keith Gorman, Head of the Special Collections and University Archives. " This gift helps to support our efforts in collection development, research support, and the use of archival materials in instruction.  Moreover, the newly named conference room will provide us with ...

Diane Russeau-Pletcher is a person who likes to go down rabbit holes when she finds them.   Exploring some of those rabbit holes recently brought her to the University Libraries at UNCG  to do research in the papers of Ellen Winston, found in the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives.   Russeau-Pledger is the 2014-2015 Research Travel Grant Award recipient of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives. Diane is studying the history of the eugenics movement in North Carolina, especially after World War II, and sees Ellen Winston as a key stakeholder in the state’s program as head of the State Eugenics Board and Commissioner of Public Welfare in North Carolina prior to being named by President Kennedy in 1963 as the first U.S. Commissioner of Welfare in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). Not only is the history of the eugenics movement still a current issue in North Carolina an...

Betsy Bernard and Daughter Martha Scherer The University Libraries recently had visit from Betsy Bernard and Luther Hodges, Jr., whose generosity made possible the renovation of the Special Collections Reading Room named for their mother, Martha Blakeney Hodges.  With them were Betsy's daughter Martha, and her husband Eugene, who live in Vienna, Austria and had not seen the Room previously. Martha Blakeney Hodges ('18) was the first chairperson of the Friends of the Library when the organization was founded in 1959 at what was then Woman's College.  She was also the First Lady of North Carolina at that time.  Her husband Luther Hodges, Sr. was then governor of the state.

Even as a beginning cellist many years ago, the question arose in Zoltan Szabo’s mind – why are there so many editions of the six Johann Sebastian Bach suites for solo cello?  As his skill and knowledge grew, the question remained an open one for him. There are no manuscripts of these important works in the composer’s own hand, but there four 18th century manuscript copies.  These four different manuscripts have spawned more than 100 published editions, not including reprints.  As time has passed, cellists have chosen different editions for many reasons, not always the best ones.  Some may have been chosen because they were inexpensive, some because they had a nice cover, or for other reasons, but there is no single definitive edition, nor is there likely to be one.  That is not even Szabo’s goal, for there is no original to consult, but he finds and studies all of the various editions of the master’s work, and tries to record the differences and changes tha...

Dorothy Rechel of Hendersonville, NC has established the Dorothy J. Rechel Women Veterans Historical Project Oral History and Program Fund to support the work of the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project at the University Libraries at UNC Greensboro. Her gift will support the collections and ongoing educational programming of the project. Rechel was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.   At the age of eighteen, following graduation from high school, she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps and began a highly varied twenty-three year career which included overseas assignments in France and Viet Nam.  Her military education was gained in specialized training at several service schools and the US Army Sergeants Major Academy from which she graduated in 1974. Sergeant Major Rechel’s final duty station was Fort Monroe, Virginia, beginning in 1971, at the Headquarters, US Army Training and Doctrine Command.   There she was privileged to have been involved in pl...

The April 2013 issue of Our State features features an article about the North Carolina Literary Map developed by the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives at UNC Greensboro.  Markfield, Evan.  "Digital Literary Heritage: An Online Database Tracks Authors and the Local Towns Where their Stories are Set." Our State (April 2013): 26. The website for the North Carolina Literary Map is library.uncg.edu/dp/nclitmap

The papers of two eminent alumni authors have come to the University Archives, and are to be processed and made available later this year. The papers of Angela Davis-Gardner include research materials, various drafts of manuscripts, and promotional materials. Angela graduated from UNCG with a MFA in Creative Writing, where her mentors were Randall Jarrell, Robert Watson, and Peter Taylor. The Michael Gills papers also include various drafts of manuscripts, correspondence, and promotional materials.  He was Randall Jarrell Fellow at the MFA Program at UNCG while receiving his degree, and received the Ph.D. in fiction writing from the University of Utah.  

Ms. Kathryn F. Wirkus has established The Kathryn F. Wirkus Women Veterans Historical Project Fund at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Her gift will enhance the work of the Betty Carter Women Veterans Historical Project of the University Libraries.  Born and reared in Miami, FL, Wirkus received her BA in Early Childhood Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an MA in Guidance and Counseling from Webster University.  Kathryn served in the United Stated Air Force for 27 years on active duty, the Guard and Reserve components, serving in various capacities as an education & training and personnel officer.  Following retirement from the USAF in 2006, she began a second career as a Colorado State Veterans Service Office, and as the Colorado Women Veterans Coordinator.   She was chair of the planning committee for the first Colorado Women Veterans Conference 2011 and the subsequent Resource Fair 2012.  In 2...