by Jeremy A. Smith This article appeared in the Volume 2, Issue 1 Spring/Summer 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. On April 17, 2020, the Special Collections Committee of the Appalachian Studies Association held its first formal meeting via Zoom. The committee was originally schedule to meet during the 2020 ASA Conference and was rescheduled after the conference was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stewart Plein chaired the meeting and was one of nine archivists and librarians in attendance. Gene Hyde and Liz Harper provided an update on the Appalachian Curator newsletter, noting that viewership continues to increase: from 300…
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Ginseng, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and Appalachian archives
By Trevor McKenzie, W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Appalachian State University This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. It is exactly the wrong time of the year to dig ginseng, making it the perfect time to dig into the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection’s holdings concerning “The Divine Root.” This summer, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, held June 24-28 and July 1-5, celebrates the traditions and folklore surrounding American ginseng, one of Appalachia’s oldest natural exports. The event will bring together a wide array of people, ranging from ginseng gatherers still using time-tested traditions…
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Curating Appalachian Futures: an interdisciplinary, collaborative project
By Sally Brown Deskins, Exhibits Coordinator, West Virginia University Libraries This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Curating Appalachian Futures, an interdisciplinary project spearheaded by myself, Exhibits Coordinator for West Virginia University Libraries, was a complex, collaborative project including contributions and partners region wide. This article will take a look at the process of creating the broad, tremendous exhibit with 50 artistic, scholarly and community contributors and the mini-conference that stemmed from it, further contextualizing and giving impact to the idea beyond the walls. Appalachian Futures is the main exhibit developed by…
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Northern Appalachian History Digital Storytelling Archives
By Christina Fisanick, California University of Pennsylvania and Robert Stakeley, Senator John Heinz History Center This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Christina Fisanick, an associate professor of English at California University of Pennsylvania, began seeking an opportunity to integrate digital storytelling in her honors writing classes since she completed her Certificate in Digital Storytelling from the University of Colorado at Denver in 2010. Robert Stakeley, the Education Outreach Coordinator at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had been searching for additional ways to showcase the collections from the Heinz History Center…
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Community Archiving Profile: Community-driven Archives Programs in the Buncombe County Public Library System
By Katherine Calhoun Cutshall and Zoe Rhine This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. The staff of the North Carolina Room at Pack Memorial Library, located in downtown Asheville, NC, is always on the lookout for new ways to engage the public in our work. Until 2009, when the collection first moved into a space of its own, (separate from adult reference) there had not been much in the way of these efforts. Searching for inspiration, staff encountered Archives Alive: Expanding Engagement with Public Library Archives and Special Collections by Diantha Dow…
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Community Archiving Profile: Continuing the Story: Oral Histories Shape Arthurdale’s Legacy
By Meredith Dreistadt, AmeriCorps Member and acting archivist at Arthurdale Heritage, Inc. This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. In the height of the Great Depression, Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady to the newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt, left affluent Washington, D.C. to travel to one of the most impoverished communities in the country: the coal mining towns along Scotts Run in northern West Virginia. There she saw firsthand how horrifically affected families were by both the ripples of the Great Depression and the greed of coal companies that ruled over the…
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Community Archiving Profile: Mountain People, Mountain Lives Oral History Project
By Elizabeth McRae and Alex Macaulay, Department of History, Western Carolina University This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. For the past five years, history faculty at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC, have collaborated with students at a local high school on the Mountain People, Mountain Lives Oral History Project. Beginning each January, Drs. Elizabeth McRae and Alex Macaulay conduct a series of workshops, preparing students at Smoky Mountain High School to research, organize, and conduct oral interviews with a wide range of local people. In May, the participants scatter throughout…
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Special Collections Committee News: Thinking about Special Collections: The Understory Grounding Appalachian History
By Stewart Plein, Special Collections Committee Chair, Appalachian Studies Association This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Introduction While reading the newspaper on the first day of this New Year, my attention was drawn to an Associated Press article[i] about the impending opening of a collection of letters between the poet T.S. Eliot and his friend, Emily Hale. Sealed for fifty years at the request of Hale as a stipulation of her donation, the correspondence is now available for the first time. The opening of this collection provides students, scholars, and researchers…
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Community Archiving Profile: Hazard County, KY area photos archived by radio station WSGS
By Ariel Fugate, Mountain Association for Community and Economic Development (MACED) This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 2 Fall 2019 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Radio station WSGS, based in Perry County, Kentucky, is working to preserve memories of the Hazard, Kentucky, area through a developing a photo archive. Shane Sparkman, one of the owners of the radio station, WSGS, started the “Flashback” program on the radio because he has an interest in Hazard history. “Flashback” references something that happened on a particular day in history in East Kentucky. Shane also began developing an archive of historical photos…
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Community Archiving Profile: Foxfire: Capturing Southern Appalachian Voices for Over Fifty Years
By Kami Ahrens This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 2 Fall 2019 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Since 1966, Foxfire, a non-profit heritage preservation organization in Northeast Georgia, has been recording and sharing oral histories from across Southern Appalachia. Since its inception in a high-school English classroom, the organization has been rooted in the local community. Unlike larger institutions created by collectors, Foxfire’s collections were identified, captured, and curated by the community. Today, the organization has grown into a formal museum and archive maintained by professionals, but retains its relationships and roots within the community. Through experiential learning…
