By Gene Hyde, Head of Special Collections & University Archivist, UNC Asheville 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 this issue of the Appalachian Curator, we take a look at the origins of Special Collections at UNC Asheville. Established in 1977 (and opening its doors in 1978), UNCA’s Special Collections were originally founded as the Southern Highlands Research Center. The 1970s was a fertile decade for Appalachian Studies, Appalachian research, and Appalachian special collections and archives. Much was afoot: the Appalachian Journal was started in 1972, the Appalachian Consortium published the…
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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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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: 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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Community Archiving Profile: ᏚᏗᏱᏧᎾᏕᎶᏆᏍᏗᎢ ᎤᏂᏃᎮᎸᏅᎢ – Stories of the Snowbird Day School
By Trey Adcock and Gene Hyde, UNC Asheville 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. By the time Snowbird Day School closed in 1965, about 550 Cherokee children had attended classes in this remote Western North Carolina school, located in the Cherokee community of Snowbird or Tuti Yi (as it is known in the Cherokee language). Quakers had originally run the school in Snowbird but by the beginning part of the 20th century the federal government, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, assumed responsibility for establishing and providing educational services. Snowbird…
