UPDATE (June 19): The emergency drill is complete. All floors of Davis Library are now open.

Davis Library will be the site of an emergency drill on Wednesday, June 19, from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The UNC Department of Public Safety will coordinate the exercise, which will also include local law enforcement and response agencies.

During the drill, actors will portray gunmen, hostages, and victims. Emergency vehicles and personnel will be visible in and around Davis Library. Uniformed responders will react as they would in an actual emergency.

Library Access

The 7th and 8th floors of Davis Library will be closed during the drill. Books, carrels, and offices on those floors will not be accessible. The Library cannot page books from those floors during the drill. Other areas of Davis Library will remain open. Patrons are encouraged to use other campus libraries during this time.

Traffic

The area surrounding Davis Library will be blocked to pedestrians and vehicles, and Chapel Hill Transit service will be re-routed. Much of Raleigh Street will be blocked, and vehicles will be routed down Country Club Road. There will be access to the Cobb parking deck.

Questions?

Please direct questions about the exercise to Ron Campbell, UNC emergency management director: rcampbe@psafety.unc.edu. For questions about Davis Library access, please contact the Circulation Desk at (919) 962-1053 or Ask a Librarian.

For updates and information, visit alertcarolina.unc.edu.

Related Links

• Alert Carolina informational message (June 4, 2013)

Dr. Charles Kurzman, UNC professor of sociology

OCLC Research Briefing
Friday, June 7
9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
205 Undergraduate Library (and online)
Free and open to the public. Registration required.

UNC professor Charles Kurzman will be one of the featured speakers at a free public briefing June 7 to explore trends in scholarly research.

OCLC, a worldwide library cooperative, will sponsor the briefing, which will take place at UNC, in room 205 Undergraduate Library, and online.

The schedule for the briefing is as follows:

• 9 – 10 a.m. – “Shifts in Scholarly Attention among World Regions” by Dr. Charles Kurzman. Kurzman will present his research on how social science maps the world through changing academic attention to world regions over the past 50 years.
• 10 – 11 am. – Break
• 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. – “Why Google?: “…[Google] saved time, it saved gas, I got what I needed, and it wasn’t a big deal.” by Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway, senior research scientist, OCLC Research. Connaway will discuss results of multiple user behavior studies and recommendations for promoting user engagement with library services, sources, and systems.

Registration for both the in-person and online versions of the briefing is required. Register here via OCLC.

Charles Kurzman is a professor of sociology at and co-director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. He is author most recently of The Missing Martyrs (2011) and  Democracy Denied, 1905-1915 (2008). He has also been a member of the Administrative Board of the Library at UNC.

Related Links

• Registration information for OCLC Research Briefing
• “Shifts in Scholarly Attention among World Regions” briefing description
• “Why Google?” briefing description
• Charles Kurzman homepage

Get a CLUE in Wilson Library on May 22. The doors will open after hours for UNC students to paricipate in an immersive–and haunted–live action game of Clue.

Round up a team and solve the mystery by interrogating Clue characters, answering questions, and gathering evidence. Winning teams will receive prizes including gift certificates to Student Stores, the Yogurt Pump, and more. All players will enjoy free pizza while the scores are tallied!

Sponsored by the Wilson Special Collections Library, the R.B. House Undergraduate Library, and Friends of the Library.

Related Links

• Sign up for May 22 Clue game (UPDATE 5/20/13: Registration is now full)
• Photos from 2012 Clue
• Facebook event

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

Shutterbugs, library fans, and proud Tar Heels are invited to participate in UNC’s first Library Snapshot Day on Tuesday, April 16, 2013.

Activities will offer an opportunity to explore campus libraries and share what Carolina’s libraries mean to you.

Take a photograph of yourself with Sir Walter Raleigh in Wilson Library, your favorite children’s book in the School of Information and Library Science library, or enjoying the Samuel Hitt Medicinal Garden at the Health Sciences Library. Your photographs might help you win the Amazing UNC Libraries Race contest. Prizes include gift certificates to Student Stores and the Daily Grind.

Details and registration information are here.

Library Snapshot Day Happenings

All Day – The Amazing UNC Libraries Race contest (register now)

10 a.m. -  Story hour in the School of Information and Library Science Library, Manning Hall

11 a.m. – 2 p.m. – Photo booth at the Undergraduate Library (with snacks!)

Noon – 4 p.m. – Video booth in Davis Library (more snacks!)

1 p.m. – Behind-the-scenes tour of Davis Library (meet in the lobby)

5 p.m. - An Evening with NPR’s Carl Kasell, Friends of the Library event, GS200 Genome Sciences Building

Student opposition to North Carolina’s 1963 Speaker Ban Law will be the subject of the annual Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture Thursday, April 11, at the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Former UNC student body president Robert Spearman (’65) will discuss the controversial law that barred certain individuals from speaking on campus. Known members of the Communist Party, those who advocated the overthrow of the federal or state government, and those who pleaded the Fifth Amendment when questioned about communist or subversive activities were all prohibited from speaking at state-supported campuses.

The 5:30 p.m. lecture, sponsored by the North Carolina Collection and University Archives and Records Management Services, is free and open to the public.

The passage of the Speaker Ban Law fifty years ago drew almost immediate reaction from students and faculty, who protested that the law infringed on their rights to free speech. Students invited banned speakers to address their classmates from the sidewalk on Franklin Street and eventually initiated a lawsuit in federal court.

Spearman, now an attorney for a Raleigh law firm, testified before a state commission tasked with revising the law, which was eventually overturned in 1968.

Prior to the lecture, attendees can view the North Carolina Collection Gallery exhibition A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC beginning at 5 p.m.

The exhibition uses original letters, documents, and photographs to examine the University’s long history of free speech controversies from the nineteenth century to the present.

The exhibition runs through June 2, 2013.

“Wikipedia Edit-a-thon: African Americans in North Carolina”
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Wilson Special Collections Library
1 – 5 p.m.
Free and open to the public (Registration requested)
Information: Emily Jack, North Carolina Collection Gallery, (919) 962-0104

Academics, history buffs, and Wikipedians are invited to UNC’s first-ever Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Sunday, April 14, at the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Participants will update, improve, and create new Wikipedia articles about African American history and institutions in North Carolina.

The free public program will take place from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Refreshments and tours of Wilson Library will be provided.

Participants do not need specialized historical knowledge or experience with Wikipedia. Assistants will help locate book and article source materials and teach Wikipedia syntax and style.

Organizers encourage participants with personal laptops to bring them.

For more details and to register, visit the event page.

The event sponsors are the North Carolina Collection and student groups from the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS), including the Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists (SCOSAA), the Art and Museum Library and Information Student Society (AMLISS), and the Information and Library Science Student Association (ILSSA).

Related Links

• Wikipedia Edit-a-thon registration
• Facebook event page

NEW: View event recording, courtesy of the School of Journalism.

National Public Radio newscaster and radio personality Carl Kasell will be part of a free public program on April 16.

“An Evening with Carl Kasell” will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Genome Sciences Building, Room GS 200. Joining Kasell in conversation will be WUNC radio host Eric Hodge and UNC journalism student Mike Rodriguez. The discussion will cover Kasell’s career, his involvement with the early days of WUNC radio, and his experience breaking such news stories as the space shuttle Challenger explosion and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Kasell is a 1956 graduate of UNC. He and fellow UNC broadcast great Charles Kuralt helped to establish WUNC as a student-run FM station in 1953.

Starting at 5 p.m., attendees can enjoy a reception and view items from UNC’s University Archives related to Kasell’s time at UNC, his involvement with the university radio station, and his career at NPR.

The Genome Sciences Building is located at 250 Bell Tower Road, and is adjacent to the Bell Tower. The Ram’s Head Parking Deck provides convenient visitor parking.

Kasell, a Goldsboro, N.C., native first joined National Public Radio in 1975 as a news announcer for Weekend All Things Considered. From 1979 until his retirement in 2009, he was the daily news announcer for NPR’s Morning Edition.

He has since found new fame as the official judge and scorekeeper for the NPR weekly quiz show Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Lucky winners receive Kasell’s familiar voice recording a greeting on their home voice mail.

Kasell is a 2010 inductee to the National Radio Hall of Fame. Other honors include the Leo C. Lee Friend of Public Radio News Award for lasting commitment to public radio journalism (1996) and induction to the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame (2004).

UNC Friends of the Library, the University Archives and Records Management Services, WUNC, and the UNC School of Journalism are the sponsors of this event.

Related Links

• Event live stream, courtesy of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication

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