This article appeared in the Volume 5, Issue 1 Spring/Summer 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. George Masa’s photographic eye captured some of the earliest images of the Smoky Mountains, and his photos played a significant role in the creation of what became the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Masa immigrated from Japan sometime in the early 20th century, made his way to Asheville around 1915, and by the 1920s he had started a photography studio was taking photographs and hiking in the mountains, befriending Horace Kephart and becoming an active member of the Carolina Mountain Club. Scholarly interest in…
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Cultivating Community Access in a Time of Distance: Transforming Buncombe County’s Public Archives Space
This article appeared in the Volume 2, Issue 3 Winter 2021 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. By Katherine Calhoun Cutshall This article appeared in the Volume 2, Issue 3 Winter 2021 issue of the Appalachian Curator. When I think back on the last year, I often feel like I was better prepared than others for the changes brought by 2020. When I submitted this article for the January 2020 Curator my colleagues and I were already bracing for transformation at our institution. Buncombe County hired a new, progressive library director in fall 2018, and in December 2019 a most valuable…
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Working during COVID: Appalachian archives respond
This article appeared in the Volume 2, Issue 2 Fall 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Appalachian Curator editors asked regional archivists how they responded to working during the COVID pandemic. We received ten responses from a range of collections that reflect the different types of archives we have in Southern Appalachia – large research universities, smaller public and private liberal arts colleges, and a public library. Several general themes are consistent in these responses – repositories closed, staff developed new workflows and tackled new projects, and many places have reopened with limited hours, limited access, and different workflows. West…
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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…
