ON VIEW
The Library Makes House Calls
Flike the atmosphere of a library. It’s
why they made those little deskettes
or some researchers there’s nothing
One of the great
with the one short bookshelf and the
goose-neck lamp. But what if you prefer
your own carrel at home — or if you’re
promises
of the info age is
1,000 miles away from the Southern His-
torical Collection? Or it’s not research at
all but mere curiosity?
gaining serious
momentum in
One of the great promises of the info
age is gaining serious momentum in Wil-
son Library. The state has given the library
Wilson Library.
The state has
given the library
$1.2 million to
acquire fast and
$400,000, renewable for each of three
years, to acquire fast and sophisticated
equipment and to pay technicians to
begin digitizing both its collection and
historical resources from across the state
— page by painstaking page. Quite a bit
of it is a few clicks away already.
sophisticated
Like to trace UNC’s past through old
equipment
Yackety Yacks You can, from 1901 through
and to pay
technicians
1966 — searchable by name. Mid-19th-
century family papers, correspondence,
slave records? Read them, and look at the
originals.
to begin
digitizing its
vast collection —
You will be able to download photo-
graphs such as the stark and sublime
image that Bayard Wootten captured of
page by
painstaking
page.
Quite a bit
of it is a few
clicks away
Wilson, which is on the front cover of
this issue, while shooting her remarkable
documentation of North Carolina in the
first half of the 20th century. Wootten’s is
just one of the best of several photo
archives — including that of Hugh Morton ’48 — presumably with many more
to come as others share their attics with
the library.
already.
The project is not by any means lim-
ited to what Carolina has collected. The
State Library of North Carolina in
Raleigh has asked UNC to be the digital
host for the state. Wilson will consult
libraries, historical societies and others, as
well as scour for private collectors. “This
won’t be ‘UNC decides what’s important’
SARAH MCCARTY ARNESON ’96
— we’ll ask around the state,” said Rich
Szary, associate University librarian for spe- ished before the Yacks). The state grant will
cial collections. be supplemented with piecework for hire.
UNC has taken on digitizing the year- The GAA is paying the library to digitize
books of several public and private North the Review, with a goal of completion in
Carolina colleges (in fact, Duke’s were fin- time for the magazine’s 100th anniversary
All Yackety Yacks
from 1901 through
1966 are online
now and searchable
by name.
