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 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.

• Joel Williamson Visiting Scholar Grant ($1200 award) – For projects examining African Americans or race relations in the American South
• Guion Griffis Johnson Visiting Scholar Grant ($1000 award) – For projects examining women in the American South
• John Eugene and Barbara Hilton Cay Visiting Scholar Grant ($1000 award) – For projects examining the literary culture or traditions of the American South
• J. Carlyle Sitterson Visiting Scholar Grant ($1000 award) – For projects examining the antebellum period in the American South
• Parker-Dooley Visiting Scholar Grant ($1000 award) – For projects examining North Carolina history

Graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars who plan to use resources available in the Southern Historical Collection are eligible. Each award recipient must make at least one in-person research visit to the SHC between Sept. 1, 2013, and July 1, 2014.

All applications must be postmarked or time stamped no later than March 31, 2013.

Further requirements and application instructions are available here.

Related Links

• 2013 Visiting Scholars Grant Information from the Southern Historical Collection

Ben Taylor Concert

Singer-songwriter Ben Taylor and his band will perform Wednesday, Oct. 24 at 8 p.m. at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro. The Southern Historical Collection in the Wilson Special Collections Library is sponsoring the evening.

Concert tickets are $16 for UNC students and ArtsCenter Friends; $20 for all others ($22 on day of show). Purchase tickets from the ArtsCenter box office: (919) 929-2787 or online.

Taylor is the son of rock icons James Taylor and Carly Simon. His performance will help celebrate the 90^th birthday of his grandmother, Trudy Taylor, and the placement of Taylor family materials with the Southern Historical Collection.

Taylor recently released Listening, his first record in four years. Joining Taylor in concert will be his aunt, Kate Taylor.

The Taylors have deep ties to Chapel Hill and Carolina. James Taylor and his musical siblings grew up in Chapel Hill, where their father, Isaac, was dean of the UNC School of Medicine from 1964 to 1971. Isaac Taylor graduated from UNC in 1942. In 1989, the medical school’s Taylor Hall was named in his honor.

Related Links

• Ben Taylor concert information from The ArtsCenter
• Ben Taylor website

Autograph of Julian Shakespeare Carr, "class of 1865-66," from the St. Anthony Hall fraternity autograph book. Carrboro, N.C. is named for Carr.

Members of the St. Anthony Hall fraternity at UNC and the St. Anthony Association of North Carolina have donated a Civil War-era autograph book to the University Archives in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

The autograph book includes signatures of members of the Xi Chapter of St. Anthony Hall (Delta Psi) who attended UNC from 1862 to 1865. Members of other UNC fraternities also signed the book. Many of the signers served in the Confederate Army and lost their lives in the Civil War.

The original owner of the autograph book, William C. Prout, was a St. Anthony Hall brother and the sole graduate of UNC’s class of 1865. In 1927, he presented the book to the Xi Chapter of Delta Psi, which restored it and maintained it in their archive.

The book reveals a great deal about the lives of the students who signed it, said UNC University Archivist Jay Gaidmore.

Notations include hometowns, majors, classes taken, and even the names of the signers’ girlfriends. Prout and his fraternity brother Grahame Wood later added death dates and annotations to identify those killed in the war.

St. Anthony intends to donate additional historical materials that document its history and the various activities in which its members have participated since the chapter reorganized in 1927 after closing in the aftermath of the Civil War.

About St. Anthony Hall at UNC

A literary and artistic fraternity, St. Anthony Hall includes a diverse group of writers, artists, and performers who are highly active in student life. Members have worked on the Daily Tar Heel, Phoenix magazine, Cellar Door, LAMBDA magazine, Shakespeare’s Sister, The Sixty-Niner and Yackety Yack; served in student government; played intramural and varsity sports; performed in choral, musical, and theater groups including PlayMakers Repertory Company and The LAB! Theatre; and are involved in community literary and artistic organizations including Paperhand Puppet Intervention, the ArtsCenter in Carrboro, The Performance Collective, Internationalist Books, The Somnambulist Project, and The Peoples Channel.

Known for its support of progressive causes, St. Anthony Hall was one of only two fraternities to sign a pledge in 1963 not to patronize segregated businesses and restaurants in Chapel Hill. Its members were active in the fight to end the Speaker Ban, and in the spring of 1971, St. Anthony Hall became the first UNC fraternity to go co-ed.

Xi chapter members have included journalist Charles Kuralt (’55); UNC soccer coach Anson Dorrance (’74); book critic Jonathan Yardley (’61); sportswriter Peter Gammons (’67); editorial cartoonist Jeff MacNelly (’69); and basketball player Charlie Scott (’68), the first African-American to join a fraternity and receive an athletic scholarship at UNC.

About the University Archives

The University Archives and Records Management Services (UARMS) last year launched an effort to reach out to student organizations to help them preserve their history. To learn more about this effort, contact Jay Gaidmore at (919) 962-6402 or gaidmore@email.unc.edu.

“We don’t have many records of fraternities at UNC and only a few from this early in UNC’s history,” said Gaidmore. “We are pleased to be entrusted with this valuable historical item and hope that St. Anthony Hall’s generosity will encourage other donations from the Greek system at UNC.”

Additional information about St. Anthony Hall and the autograph book can be found on the UARMS blog.

Related Links

• St. Anthony Hall donates autograph album from the 1860s (University Archives blog post)
• St. Anthony Hall fraternity at UNC
• St. Anthony Association of North Carolina
• UNC University Archives and Records Management Services

Chang Bunker's descendant Vance Haynes reviews family documents with Linda Jacobson, Keeper of the North Carolina Collection Gallery

Descendants of Eng and Chang Bunker, the original Siamese twins, have donated a rifle, silverware, and other possessions of their famous ancestors to the UNC libraries.

The gifts are additions to the Eng and Chang collections in the North Carolina Collection of the Wilson Special Collections Library.

In April, Vance Haynes donated the .41 caliber rifle of his great-grandfather, Chang Bunker, along with a powder flask, iron ball mold, copper funnel, and a tin of percussion caps. He also presented to the Library a map of Canada and one of Europe. The twins used the maps during their world tours in the mid-nineteenth century. Haynes is a retired professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona.

Also in April, Harriet McMaster donated four pieces of the twins’ silverware, with “CE” engraved on the back. She also gave a chain that Chang wore. McMaster, of Columbia, S.C., is a great-granddaughter of Chang Bunker.

Silver that belonged to Chang and Eng Bunker, with the monogram "CE"

The conjoined twins were born in Siam (now Thailand) in 1811, but settled in Wilkes County, N.C. They married sisters Adelaide and Sarah Yates and fathered 21 children between the two families.

Haynes and McMaster are part of an extensive network of Bunker descendants who gather periodically and remain in close touch.

The UNC libraries have assembled the largest known collection of documents and memorabilia related to Eng and Chang Bunker. Visitors to Wilson Library can view letters that the twins wrote, account books and documents from their business, and advertisements for appearances that they made. Selected items are online.

“There is an enduring fascination with Eng and Chang,” said Linda Jacobson, curator of the North Carolina Collection Gallery in Wilson Library. “These latest donations help remind us that these legendary figures were real people.”

A small permanent exhibit in the Gallery documents the life of the twins. Jacobson says it is among the most popular in the Library.

To learn more about the Eng and Chang collections at UNC, or to schedule a viewing of the newly acquired items, contact Linda Jacobson, Keeper of the North Carolina Collection Gallery: ljacobso@email.unc.edu, (919) 962-0104.

Related Links

• Eng & Chang Bunker: The Siamese Twins (digitized selections from the collection)
• Chang and Eng Bunker Papers (finding aid from the Southern Historical Collection)
• The Chang and Eng Bunker Project (English 265 Honors, 2011)
• North Carolina Collection Gallery

Early Dolly Parton publicity photo, from the Goldband Recording collection in the Southern Folklife Collection.

Dolly Parton’s first recording is among the items that the Southern Folklife Collection (SFC) in the Wilson Special Collections Library will preserve, thanks to a new grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The $131,765, three-year grant is called “From the Piedmont to the Swamplands: Preserving Southern Traditional Music.” It will help the SFC digitize and make available more than 1,650 hours of rare sound recordings and 4,500 photographs of musical figures from the 1920s to the 1980s.

The Parton recording dates from 1960, when the 13-year-old Dolly traveled by bus from Tennessee to Lake Charles, La. There she recorded “Puppy Love” for the Goldband Recording Corporation. The SFC holds the original master tape for the recording.

Other rarities to be preserved include:

• Studio and field recordings of musicians B.B. King, Elizabeth Cotten, Hazel Dickens, Bob Dylan, Iry LeJune, and Tommy Jarrell;
• African-American musician “Boozoo” Chavis’s “Paper in My Shoe,” the first commercial recording of Zydeco music (1954); and
• Early photographs of the musical Seeger family, whose members include musician and folklorist Mike Seeger and his sister Peggy and half-brother, Pete.

“This grant allows us to preserve national treasures and provide online access to our collections for the first time,” says Steve Weiss, curator of the Southern Folklife Collection.

The SFC will use the grant to preserve materials from four of its most significant collections:

Goldband Recording Corporation Collection, 1930 – 1995 – The Goldband Recording Corporation has played a key role in documenting American musical traditions and shaping tastes since 1944. The grant will digitize the Parton recording and an additional 550 hours of recordings and 1,500 photographs from the Goldband collection.

William R. Ferris Collection, 1910s – 2003 – Ferris is professor of history at UNC and a former director of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Ferris collection, consisting of music and oral history interviews that he conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, is one of the most comprehensive archival collections documenting the music of the Delta.

Mike Seeger Collection, 1955 – 2002 –  The Seeger collection contains photographs, interviews, performances, and studio and field recordings that document Southern traditional musicians; Seeger’s group, the New Lost City Ramblers; and unedited masters for some of Seeger’s commercial recordings.

John Edwards Memorial Foundation Records, 1960 – 1988 – The SFC acquired the collection of the Foundation dedicated to American folk music in 1983. Its photograph holdings document key figures in Southern traditional music, including artists such as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.

Once digitized, the materials will be accessible online through the UNC Library website.

Related Links

• “Grant to preserve rare American music recordings and photos” (from UNC News Services)
• Southern Folklife Collection

The Jarrahi Family Library Fund for Persian Studies will provide sustained library support for one of the most rapidly growing programs at the University.

“Tens of millions of people speak Persian or one of its variants,” said Carl Ernst, co-director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. Most speakers live in Middle East and Central Asian countries such as Iran and Afghanistan.

“Not only does this region have a long and rich culture,” said Ernst, “but its prominence in world events has driven an unprecedented interest in Persian studies.”

Persian language has been taught at UNC since 2000 in the Department of Asian Studies, said Ernst. A growing number of UNC faculty members and graduate students use Persian in their research and as they prepare for careers in government, the military, and nongovernmental organizations active in the region.

The $25,000 contribution will be the cornerstone of an endowment that Middle East and African Studies Librarian Mohamed Abou El Seoud can tap to purchase books, journals, films, and language learning resources. Through cooperative agreements, affiliates of Duke, North Carolina Central, and North Carolina State universities will also have access to the new materials.

Jarrahi is an Iranian-born psychiatrist who completed his training at UNC in 1967 and earned a master of public health degree from the University in 1969. Two of his three daughters are also UNC graduates. Jarrahi and his family are long-time supporters of the University.

“What is wonderful about this endowment is that it guarantees ongoing support for key resources like periodical subscriptions,” said Ernst. “We are extremely grateful for this generous and thoughtful gift.”

Because endowments must grow over time before they yield expendable income, the Library also seeks donations of books and cash gifts that may be used right away to support Persian studies. Abou El Seoud maintains an online wish list of the most urgently needed items.

For more information about the Library’s Persian collection and ways to support it, contact Abou El Seoud 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.

Related Links

• Wish list of most urgently needed Persian Studies library materials
• Persian Studies program at UNC

Howard Holsenbeck, UNC class of 1963

Have you considered joining the Friends of the Library at UNC? Your gift could go twice as far if you join by the end of the year.

A generous match challenge from longtime Library supporter Howard Holsenbeck will add $100 to the first 100 new Friends memberships of at least $100 each. Gifts must be made by Dec. 31, 2011.

Although it sounds complicated, the idea is simple. “Giving to the Library is one of the best investments I’ve ever made,”  said Holsenbeck, a member of the UNC class of 1963. “I’d like to encourage others to join me.”

Holsenbeck’s support for the Library reaches back to the year of his graduation, when he sent $50 to what he called “the most important part of the University.” Since then he has made a gift every single year, often several a year, to support the collections of the University Library. A previous Holsenbeck challenge in 2010 doubled 10 gifts of $1,000 from new donors to the Library.

“Howard Holsenbeck epitomizes the generosity of our Friends of the Library,” said University Librarian Sarah Michalak. “He wants to share the sense of purpose and commitment with others by encouraging them to give to the Library, too.”

Friends of the Library at all levels receive the biannual magazine Windows and advance notification of Library events and exhibits. Friends also receive a library borrower’s card that gives access to resources in any campus library (minimum annual gift of $25). At higher giving levels, building and endowment naming opportunities are available.

You may make a gift to the Library at any time online, or contact Peggy Myers, Director of Library Development, pmyers@email.unc.edu, (919) 843-5651.

Related Links

• Make a gift to the Library
• Friends of the Library

The grant program recognizes the creative spirit of library staff members by connecting novel ideas with resources. The emphasis is on experimentation and exploration in the quest to meet existing or future needs.

The first round of competitive grants was underwritten through an allocation from the University Libraries. The Libraries are seeking additional funding in order to be able to award more significant and sustained awards.

“Our staff members have boundless creativity,” said University Librarian and Associate Provost for University Libraries Sarah Michalak. “It’s my hope that others will join in seeking innovative ways to address real-world information problems in an intelligent, sustainable way,” she said.

The winning proposals, to be completed by June 2012, are as follows:

Digital Repository: North Carolina Regional Extension Centers Listserv Email Communications
Award amount: $5,800
North Carolina’s Regional Extension Centers (RECs) have received federal grant funding to help primary care physicians in private practice across the state implement electronic health records. Initial work of the RECs has taken place via email and dispersed documentation. Investigator Mary Beth Schell (Health Sciences Library) will create a browseable and searchable archive for this important and growing body of unpublished literature. Her investigation is expected to provide a model for professional library-based curation of geographically dispersed and diversely created information.

Mobile Planning and Prototypes: NC Health Info, AHEC Digital Library
Award amount: $6,450
This project will research, design, and implement mobile prototype versions of two widely used sources of online health information. The AHEC Digital Library provides current medical literature and professional resources to healthcare providers across the state. NC Health Info is an online guide to websites and health information for North Carolina citizens. Investigators Adam Dodd and Christie Silbajoris (Health Sciences Library) will work towards development of mobile-specific versions of these sites to meet the growing demand for mobile access by both practitioners and healthcare consumers in North Carolina.

Gifts to the University Libraries Innovation Awards will contribute to the development of innovative endeavors by UNC Libraries staff. They will also support the Innovate@Carolina Campaign, a $125 million drive to help make Carolina a world leader in launching university-born ideas for the good of society. To learn more about the campaign, visit innovate.unc.edu.

To support the University Libraries Innovation Awards, contact Peggy Myers, Director of Library Development: (919) 843-5651, pmyers@email.unc.edu.

Related Link

• Innovate@Carolina Campaign