Rare Book Collection Recent Acquisitions Evening

On April 9, the UNC Rare Book Collection (RBC) will host a display of additions to the collection from the past two years.

The 5:30 p.m. event in the Wilson Special Collections Library’s Grand Reading Room is free and open to the public.

“These materials demonstrate the continued growth of UNC’s Rare Book Collection and the many ways it supports intellectual inquiry at the University,” said Claudia Funke, Curator of the Rare Book Collection. “It’s an exciting way for the community to find out what’s new at RBC.”

Selected Items from the Exhibit

Material will range in date from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Among the items on display will be:

• The first book by the first feminist of the New World, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Inundación castálida de la única poetisa, musa dezima (1689);
• Galileo Galilei’s last book, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno à due nuove scienze (1638), a gift of UNC Professor Lawrence Slifkin and Miriam Slifkin;
• One of the early and extremely rare bookseller’s catalogues issued by the great scholar-printer Robert Estienne (1546), an important addition to the RBC’s collection of over 500 Estienne imprints;
• William Wordsworth letters, Romantic literature, and Lake District guides from the collection of UNC professor Mark L. Reed III;
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s (‘41) sketchbook with original drawings and the first and early versions of his poem “The Canticle of Jack Kerouac” (1987);
• Classic modern fine-press books including Robinson Jeffers’s Granite & Cypress (1975) from the collection of James R. Patton (’48) and Mary M. Patton;
• James Malcolm Rymer’s The String of Pearls, or, The Barber of Fleet Street (1850), the expanded edition of the best-selling serial that created the enduring Sweeney Todd legend, known in only one other copy.

Visitors to the event will also have a chance to view the exhibition The Encyclopedic Impulse in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room, starting at 5 p.m. The exhibition examines the human desire to assemble and organize the world’s information.

Learn More

The event is sponsored by the Rare Book Collection and Friends of the Library. For information about the Rare Book Collection, contact Claudia Funke at cfunke@email.unc.edu or (919) 962-1143.

Related Links

• Rare Book Collection
• The Encyclopedic Impulse exhibition information

Architectural detail from Persepolis, in Fars (Pars) province

A $25,000 donation has doubled the Library’s endowment for Persian studies and will help to build collections that support this rapidly growing area of research and teaching at UNC.

An anonymous donor has established the Pars Endowment for Persian Study. Funds from the endowment will help the Library acquire Persian studies materials such as books, journals, and electronic resources. The endowment will also provide appropriate technology to ensure access to specialized materials.

Pars is the historical name for one of Iran’s 31 provinces. Pars, now known as Fars, was the birthplace of the Persian Empire and its founder, Cyrus the Great (born ca. 600 BCE). The donor wished to honor the ancient history of what is now Iran, and particularly the people of the donor’s home county of Dashtestan in Fars province, said Mohamed Hamed, Middle East and African Studies Librarian.

“Helping the UNC Library grow its Persian studies collections is a remarkable tribute,” said Hamed.  “It is part of a groundswell of community support from the local Persian community that is helping us build outstanding collections in this area.”

The Pars Endowment joins a 2012 endowment of $25,000 from the Jarrahi family of Winston-Salem, also to support Persian studies collections.

Persian language has been taught at UNC since 2000 in the Department of Asian Studies. A growing number of UNC faculty members and graduate students use Persian in their research and as they prepare for careers in many domains.

In addition to endowment funding, the Library seeks donations of books and cash gifts to support Persian studies. Hamed maintains a wish list of the most urgently needed items.

For more information about the Library’s Persian collection and ways to support it, contact Hamed at mseoud@email.unc.edu, (919) 843-3859, or Emily Silverman, Associate Director of Library Development, at essilver@email.unc.edu, (919) 962-3437. Information about the Persian Studies program at UNC is available at http://persian.unc.edu.

Related Links

• Endowment Will Build Persian-Language Library Collections at UNC
• Persian Studies program at UNC

Download exhibit poster (pdf)

A new exhibition in the North Carolina Collection Gallery of Wilson Library explores the long history of free speech controversies at UNC.

A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC will use original letters, documents and photographs to examine some of the University’s most contentious moments from the nineteenth century to the present.

It marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Speaker Ban. The controversial 1963 law forbade known members of the Communist party or those who advocated the overthrow of the federal or state government from speaking on campus. The Ban was overturned in 1968.

Visitors to the exhibit will see original materials from the Library’s North Carolina Collection, Southern Historical Collection, and University Archives and Records Management Services. Highlights include:

• A page from the early 19^th century “Laws of the University of North Carolina” barring students from delivering “indecent, profane, or immoral” speeches.

• The November 1939 “Sex Issue” of the Buccaneer. The student council ordered this issue of the student humor magazine burned. The Buccaneer had frequent run-ins with campus authorities and was banned from campus at one point.

• Video of UNC police chief Arthur Beaumont ordering Herbert Aptheker, a member of the Communist Party, off the campus in March 1966 during the Speaker Ban.

• A letter from David Duke, Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, to the Daily Tar Heel. Students shouted down Duke when he attempted to speak on campus in January 1975. He criticized the protesting students for “suppressing” his right to speak and for limiting their classmates’ right to hear.

• Postcards sent to Chancellor James Moeser as part of the Family Policy Council’s organized protest of the University’s summer reading selection for 2002, Approaching the Qu’ran: The Early Revelations by Michael Sells.

On April 11, former UNC student body president Robert Spearman (’65) will deliver the annual Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture in conjunction with the exhibition.

Spearman—now an attorney in Raleigh—will recall student efforts to repeal the Speaker Ban, including his own testimony before a state commission tasked with revising the law.

Download event flier (pdf)

Nowruz Persian New Year: Celebrating the Persian Collection at UNC
Monday, March 18, 2013
5:45 – 8:30 p.m.
Wilson Special Collections Library
Free and open to the public
Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

Persian food, music, and dance will be part of a celebration of Persian library collections at UNC on March 18.

The festivities will take place in the Wilson Special Collections Library. The event coincides with Nowruz, the Persian New Year that is traditionally a time of joy and celebration.

The program will begin at 5:45 p.m. with a reception catered by Cilantro Restaurant in Durham. Persian materials from the UNC Libraries will be on view during the reception and calligrapher Majid Roohafza will demonstrate his craft. A Haft Sin table, a traditional Nowruz setting of seven items beginning with the Persian letter “s,” will also be on view, with an explanation of the items and their significance.

The program will begin at 6:30 p.m., as follows:

• Remarks  by UNC professor Carl Ernst and members of the local Persian community who have helped to build collections of Persian library materials at UNC;
• Musical interlude with Behnam Zamanian and Shahram Mazhari;
• Keynote address: “Teaching Persian Poetry at UNC” by UNC professor Omid Safi;
• Student music and dance performances by members of the UNC Persian Cultural Society;
• Tea and sweets by Jahan International Market of Chapel Hill

Two recent endowments, the Jarrahi Family Endowment and the Pars Endowment, have built the Library’s capacity over the past year to purchase Persian language and cultural materials in support of one of the University’s fastest growing areas of study.

For more information about the Library’s Persian Studies collection and ways to support it, contact Mohamed Hamed, Middle East and African Studies librarian, at mseoud@email.unc.edu, (919) 843-3859, or Emily Silverman, associate director of library development, at essilver@email.unc.edu, (919) 962-3437. Further information about the Persian Studies program at UNC is available at http://persian.unc.edu.

Update, March 7: All Kenan Science Library services and spaces have been restored. Thank you for your patience.

A weekend leak in Venable Hall has closed some areas of the Kenan Science Library.

Until further notice, Kenan Science Library is operating with reduced seating. Study room G301K is also unavailable.

The leak did not damage any library materials.

For questions about access to the Kenan Science Library, contact the staff there at (919) 962-1188 or Ask a Librarian.

The human desire to assemble and organize the world’s information is the inspiration for The Encyclopedic Impulse, an exhibition at UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library.

The exhibition marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Denis Diderot, editor and principal author of the great eighteenth-century Encyclopédie, which sought to bring together and disseminate the world’s knowledge. Visitors to the exhibition can see multiple volumes of the Encyclopédie from the Rare Book Collection.

Other materials will explore the process of defining and compiling knowledge and the literal translation of “encyclopedia” from the Greek as a “circle of learning.” Publications on view will include an early printed edition of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, the ancient text often identified as the first encyclopedic work; writings on knowledge by scientist, philosopher, and statesman Francis Bacon, a contemporary of Shakespeare; Athanasius Kircher’s Turris Babel (1679); and Pierre Bayle’s Projet et fragmens d’un dictionaire critique (1692), a forerunner of the Encyclopédie.

The exhibition will also probe how encyclopedias relate to other reference works, such as Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, and to one another. The famous 11^th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica will be on view, as well as encyclopedias from Germany, China, and Spain.

Twentieth-century works including H. G. Wells’s The Idea of a World Encyclopedia (1936); Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel (1943); and Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus (1981) will reflect on the concept of the encyclopedia.

For hours and exhibition information, contact the Wilson Special Collections Library, (919) 962-3765 or wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

Related Links

• Rare Book Collection
• Mythic Quest for the Universal Library is Topic of Feb. 27 Lecture

From Alexandria to Google: The Mythic Quest for Universal Libraries
Talk by Prof. Ken Hillis
Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013
Wilson Special Collections Library
5 p.m. Exhibition opening | Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room
5:30 p.m. Program | Pleasants Family Assembly Room
Free and open to the public
Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

“From Alexandria to Google: The Mythic Quest for Universal Libraries” will be the title of a talk by UNC professor Ken Hillis on Feb. 27 at UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library.

Hillis will trace Google’s quest to organize the world’s information through a lineage of mathematicians and metaphysicians, from the Atomists of ancient Greece to medieval philosopher Ramón Llull, from science fiction writer H.G. Wells to the contemporary wizards of search. Hillis will uncover the magical thinking that undergirds online search and draw on the lessons of the library at Alexandria and the Tower of Babel to offer a cautionary tale in the mythic quest for universal libraries.

The talk celebrates the opening of the exhibition The Encyclopedic Impulse in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room. The exhibition marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Denis Diderot, editor and principal author of the great eighteenth-century Encyclopédie, which sought to bring together and disseminate the world’s knowledge.

Hillis is professor of media and technology studies in the department of communication studies. He is co-author of the recent book Google and the Culture of Search (Routledge, 2012). His other books include Online a Lot of the Time (Duke University Press, 2009) and Everyday eBay (Routledge, 2006).

Related Links

• The Encyclopedic Impulse

UPDATE: Odum Institute construction will begin Monday, Feb. 11.

Construction will begin in Davis Library in early February to prepare office, computing, and teaching space for the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science. The Institute will relocate in 2013 from Manning Hall.

Demolition and construction are likely to cause noise and disruption throughout the semester on the southeast corner of the library’s second floor, possibly carrying to other areas. Access to library materials and computers will not be affected. Most seating on the second floor will remain accessible.

The Library is coordinating with contractors to minimize disruption. Work will generally end by 7 p.m. to permit quiet evening study. No work will take place during high-use periods, such as mid-terms and finals.

The move builds on existing close relationships between the nation’s oldest social science research institute and the Library. The organizations offer complementary services and instruction in areas such as geographic information systems and data management services. Researchers in many disciplines regularly consult with staff from both organizations.

For questions related to the construction or relocation, contact Carol Hunter, Associate University Librarian for Collections and Services: cfhunter@email.unc.edu or (919) 962-1301.

Hurricane Hazel at Carolina Beach, 1954. Photograph by Hugh Morton.

The Wilson Library exhibit Photographic Angles: News Photography in the North Carolina Collection will remain on view until Feb. 10, 2013.

The exhibit is in the North Carolina Collection Gallery on the main floor of Wilson Library.

The extension offers an additional week to view 30 published and unpublished photographs taken for the News & Observer of Raleigh, the Daily Tar Heel, the Durham Herald-Sun, and other newspapers from 1891 through 2000. The images show how photographers use low camera angles, wide-angle lenses, and personal perspectives to create compelling news photographs.

The photojournalists represented include Hugh Morton (UNC ’43); UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication faculty members Jock Lauterer (UNC ’67) and Paul Cuadros; Roland Giduz (UNC ’48), former editor of The Chapel Hill News Leader and The News of Orange County; Charlotte Observer photographer Don Sturkey; and The Hatterasman author Ben Dixon MacNeill.

The exhibit is sponsored by the North Carolina Collection and draws on the holdings of its North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives.

Meg Tuomala

Meg Tuomala, Electronic Records Archivist

Meg began Dec. 1, 2012, as Electronic Records Archivist in the University Archives and Records Management Services.

Meg will lead efforts within the Archives to manage and preserve born-digital materials, and will assist other special collections units at UNC in doing so. She will also support UNC faculty, students, and staff in depositing digital materials into the Carolina Digital Repository (CDR), and will work with other library staff to define and implement repository policies, workflows, and capabilities.

Meg was most recently Digital Archivist at the University Archives of Washington University in St. Louis. She worked previously at UNC as the Records Service Archivist.

She holds an M.S.L.S. and a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Romance Languages from UNC.

Contact Meg: (919) 962-6402 or mtuomala@email.unc.edu.

Kirill Tolpygo

Kirill Tolpygo, Librarian for Slavic and East European Resources

Kirill began Jan. 1 as Librarian for Slavic and East European Resources.

He will build collections of Slavic and East European resources and will develop and deliver reference, outreach, and instructional services to faculty and students. He will also serve as Curator of the André Savine Collection.

Kirill most recently held this position in an interim capacity, before which he was a cataloger for the Savine Collection.

He holds an M.L.S. and a M.A. in linguistics from the University at Buffalo and a B.A. in linguistics from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Contact Kirill: (919) 962-3740 or ktolpygo@email.unc.edu.

Danianne Mizzy

Danianne Mizzy, Head of Kenan Science Information Services

Danianne began Jan. 7 as the Library’s first head of Kenan Science Information Services.

Leading a team of librarians, she will provide coordination of information services for faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates in the sciences and vision for the development of innovative approaches to e-science and data management. She will also collaborate with staff at the UNC Health Sciences Library to build strong interdisciplinary science collections and services.

Danianne’s prior positions include Engineering Librarian at the Monell Engineering Library at Columbia University and  Director of the Ewell Sale Stewart Library and Archives at The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia.

She holds an M.L.I.S. from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.F.A. in design from the Yale School of Drama, and an A.B. in International Relations from Brown University.

Contact Danianne: (919) 962-1188 or mizzy@email.unc.edu.