This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. New collections in regional repositories: Buncombe County Special Collections, Asheville University of North Carolina Asheville University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Buncombe County Special Collections, Asheville Mary Mitchell Westall Large Collection on Westall Family History (1905-2016), additional accrual, MS294. Materials in this collection represent five generations of the family of Asheville builder James Manassas Westall (1861-1943). With the 1914 marriage of his son “Jack” to Mary Mitchell Wiley, the “hillbilly” Westall clan was united with the Tennessee business roots of Asheville hotelier Newton…
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Appalachian Collections at the Ohio State University Center for Folklore Studies Archive
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. by Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, Archivist, OSU Center for Folklore Studies The Folklore Archive of the Center for Folklore Studies at The Ohio State University is a repository of international and regional folklore, regional history, and expressive culture comprised of twenty-three main collections stemming from the ethnographic and text-based research of faculty, students, and professional folklorists of the university. As an extension of the university’s land-grant mission, the Folklore Archive seeks to serve Ohio counties through the documentation, preservation, and application of folklore materials. With thirty-three…
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Berea College Welcomes Archivist Emily Hilliard
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. By Tim Binkley, Head of Special Collections and Archives In July 2023, the Special Collections and Archives (SCA) department of Hutchins Library welcomed Emily Hilliard to our team. Emily is serving as Berea College Folklorist, a newly-funded position. She could have been stationed within other college programs and offices, but it seemed logical to the committee that created the position to give her direct access to SCA staff and resources. Of course, we agreed! Emily is a folklorist, writer, and media producer with degrees…
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Editor’s Column
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. By Gene Hyde (UNC Asheville) and Liz Harper (Western Carolina University) Welcome to the Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. This issue features several articles about collections from institutions in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Jasper-Waugh Quasebarth describes the Appalachian collections at Ohio State University’s Center for Folklore Studies, while Harrison Wick writes about the digitization of the James Dougherty Collection at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Stewart Plein of West Virginia University presents a fascinating example of her scholarship on how publishers portrayed Appalachia on…
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The Bill and Alice Hart Appalachian archival internships at UNC Asheville
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. A few years ago Bill and Alice Hart donated their private library of Western North Carolina books and materials to Special Collections at UNC Asheville, as the Appalachian Curator reported several issues ago. This year, Bill and Alice Hart continued their generosity by creating the Bill and Alice Hart Internship for UNC Asheville students interested in working with Appalachian archives. The first Bill and Alice Hart Intern began work this semester in UNC Asheville’s Special Collections. Deb Irwin, a history major at UNC Asheville,…
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Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. By Kellen Carpenter, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Western Carolina University Currently, the digital assets of Special Collections at Western Carolina University (WCU) and the University of North Carolina and Asheville (UNCA) live together on the website of the Southern Appalachian Digital Collections Partnership alongside the bold mission statement that declares: “The Southern Appalachian Digital Collections Partnership was founded in 2019 to host centralized online access to unique regionally focused digitized materials that document the history and culture of Southern Appalachia.” It’s a mission statement that…
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The Appalachian Curator welcomes two new Appalachian archivists to the region
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Kim Larmee is now the Archivist, Records Manager & Liaison Librarian at The University of Virginia’s College at Wise. Larmee is a Certified Archivist with a BA in Criminal Justice (minor in History) from Indiana University and an MLIS from the University of Iowa with a Certification in Special Collections. She previously worked at the Iowa Women’s Archive, the Science of Mind Archives and Library Foundation, and the Archive of American Art at the Smithsonian, and also spent a summer in Italy learning paper…
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Digitization of the James Dougherty Collection at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP)
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. By Dr. Harrison Wick, Special Collections Librarian and University Archivist Technological obsolescence and “file not found” are the prospects for many collections if digital conversion is not carried out during the lifecycle of electronic records, data files, and especially audio and video recordings. After conducting an in-house survey of the Special Collections and University Archives at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) in Indiana, Pennsylvania, it was determined that record group and manuscript group collections contained more than 5,000 audio cassette tapes and 2,500 video…
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Charles Neville Buck’s The Call of the Cumberlands: The Importance of Multiple Editions of the Same Book
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. By Stewart Plein, Curator, Rare Books, Printed Resources, Appalachian Collection, West Virginia University In my role as curator of rare books and the Appalachian book collection at WVU, I’m always on the lookout for books that add research value to our collections. One of my favorite go to resources is often referred to as Appalachian Local Color Literature, popular during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I consider this time period to be of exceptional importance to Appalachian Studies as a documentation of a…
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Media Archives Fellowships at Berea College
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 1 Spring/Summer Winter 2023 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Berea College Special Collections and Archives Media Archives Fellowships 2023 Blakeley Burger and Grace Rogers have been chosen by the Department of Special Collections and Archives at Berea College’s Hutchins Library to receive 2023 Media Archives Fellowships. The fellowships will support two weeks of research in the Berea Archive’s many field recordings of earlier generation eastern and central Kentucky fiddlers and banjo players. However, each will be engaging the music from quite different perspectives. Blakeley Burger is a fiddle player, guitarist, songwriter, and teacher…
