A drawing of the Old Well on a 1900 letter from UNC President Francis Venable.

A new online exhibit, Water at UNC-Chapel Hill, explores the role that water has played in the history of the University.

The exhibit is the latest addition to The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History. It connects with the University’s two-year academic theme “Water in Our World,” which seeks to mobilize the campus, inspire interdisciplinary research, and spark new thinking about water issues.

Water at UNC-Chapel Hill features links to brief narratives and 19 sets of images taken from the University Archives, the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, and the North Carolina Collection Gallery.

Exhibit Highlights

• Photographs of local waterways and the Old Well;
• A 1793 letter from “Father of the University” William Richardson Davie in which he described the land on which the future university would be built as having an “abundance of springs of the purest and finest water”;
• An image of the indoor pool inside Bynum Gymnasium, now used as office space for the Graduate School;
• Images and materials related to the severe droughts of the 1960s and 70s, when the University Lake reservoir fell to one-sixth of its normal level, leading Chapel Hill to purchase water from Durham and institute usage restrictions.

The Virtual Museum tells the story of the history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill through online exhibits of digital texts and images.

Other exhibits on the site include campus architectural highlights, Carolina’s literary history, and student life at Carolina.

For more information, contact Records Services Archivist Lawrence Giffin at (919) 962-6402 or lgiffin@email.unc.edu.

Related Links

• Water at UNC-Chapel Hill virtual exhibit
• The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History

Download a copy of the report (pdf)

Despite budgetary setbacks, writes University Librarian Sarah Michalak, the Library has transformed itself dramatically in a time of rapid change.The Library has helped to drive scholarship, teaching, and learning with outstanding research collections and leading-edge technologies.

To request a print copy of the report, please contact Judy Panitch, Director of Library Communications, panitch@email.unc.edu.

Download event flier (pdf)

University History Lives in Wilson Library
Wilson Special Collections Library
Saturday, May 11, 2013
1-5 pm.
Free and open to the public
Information: (919) 962-3765

Commencement visitors can step back in time during an open house at the Wilson Special Collections Library on Saturday, May 11.

Yearbooks and memorabilia from the reunion classes of 1953, ’58, ’68, and ’73 will be on view. A special class of ’63 slide show will feature music of that year, drawn from the Southern Folklife Collection.

Visitors will also be able to view the exhibitions A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC in the North Carolina Collection Gallery, and the Rare Book Collection exhibition The Encyclopedic Impulse in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room.

Wilson Library is located on the south side of Polk Place, opposite South Building. It is home to the North Carolina Collection and North Carolina Collection Gallery; the Rare Book Collection; the Southern Historical and Southern Folklife collections; and University Archives and Records Management Services.

The open house is sponsored by the Wilson Special Collections Library and the Friends of the Library.

Download event flier (pdf)

“James Reston, Jr.: A Life in Writing”
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Wilson Special Collections Library
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

Journalist and author James Reston, Jr. (’63) will reflect on his life as a writer and discuss two of his forthcoming books on May 7 at the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Reston, currently a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, will talk about his September 11 novel The Nineteenth Hijacker and his nonfiction book The Real Target in Dallas, which argues that then Texas Governor John Connally was the intended target in the JFK assassination.

Sponsored by the Southern Historical Collection and the Friends of the Library, the 5:30 p.m. event is free and open to the public.

Reston’s appearance also comes on the occasion of his donation of his personal archive to the Southern Historical Collection. The donation includes more than 25 boxes of correspondence and notes from Reston’s writing career.

Reston, who has been a fellow at the American Academy in Rome and a Scholar in Residence at the Library of Congress, served as an assistant to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall 1964-65. In 1976-1977, Reston was David Frost’s Watergate advisor for the famous televised interviews with President Richard Nixon. His role in the interviews was depicted by the actor Sam Rockwell in the 2008 film Frost/Nixon.

He served as a UNC Lecturer in Creative Writing 1971-81, and was a Morehead scholar and an All South soccer player during his time as a UNC student.

Reston’s books include The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/​Nixon Interviews (2007), The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally (1989), and Our Father Who Art in Hell: The Life and Death of Jim Jones (1981). His journalism has been published in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time, and The New York Times Magazine, among others.

Reston will also participate in UNC’s reunion weekend May 9-12, including moderating the panel “Race, Desegregation, and Chapel Hill, 1959-63” at 10:15 a.m. on Saturday, May 11, at the Wilson Library.

Related Links

• A new website collecting almost all of James Reston, Jr.’s journalism and essays of the past forty years
• Southern Historical Collection

In conjunction with the Wilson Library exhibit A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC, the University Gazette has published a quick quiz about the history of free speech at the University.

Take the quiz and let us know how you do!

You can cram first by visiting the North Carolina Collection Gallery on the main floor of the Wilson Special Collections Library. A Right to Speak and to Hear will be on exhibit through June 2.

Related Links

• UNC academic freedom quiz in the University Gazette (April 17, 2013)
• A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC exhibition information

Download event flier (pdf)

Rare Book Collection Recent Acquisitions Evening
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Wilson Special Collections Library
5 p.m. Viewing of exhibition The Encyclopedic Impulse, Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room
5:30 p.m. Display of recent additions, Grand Reading Room
Free and open to the public
Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

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.