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 and even a day of free parking behind Wilson Library!

Details and registration information coming soon.

Library Snapshot Day Happenings

All Day – The Amazing UNC Libraries Race contest

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

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.

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

Ongoing efforts to preserve Cuba’s written cultural heritage will be the subject of a lecture Tuesday, March 26, in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

The Director of the National Library of Cuba, Dr. Eduardo Torres Cuevas, will provide an overview of the Library’s collections and innovative user services.

The 5:30 p.m. event in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room is free and open to the public.

Torres Cuevas is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the Unión Nacional de Historiadores de Cuba, the Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, and the Asociación de Historiadores Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, and is the current president of the Cuban Academy of History.

The evening is sponsored by the Friends of the Library and the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA).

“When I Was at UNC”: Preserving the Work and Legacy of Student Organizations through Documentation

Student organizations have long been integral to the UNC experience, with more than 600 clubs, societies, and other groups in existence today.

On Tuesday, March 26, the University Archives will host “‘When I Was at UNC’: Preserving the Work and Legacy of Student Organizations through Documentation” at 5:30 p.m. in the UNC Student Union Room 3201.

The program will describe how student organizations can make their mark on Carolina permanent and ensure that their accomplishments are remembered by future generations.

It will also feature a display of manuscripts and photographs on the history of student organizations at UNC, scrapbooks from early fraternities, the original charter of the Campus YMCA, and old Yackety Yack yearbooks.

The event, sponsored by University Archives and Records Management Services and the Office of Student Activities and Organizations, will be presented by graduate students Carla Davis-Castro and Morgan Jones.

Students who have or know of materials relating to student organizations at UNC can also contact UNC Archivist Jay Gaidmore at (919) 962-6402 or gaidmore@email.unc.edu.

Related links:

• Why Donate Your Organization’s Records (Information from University Archives and Records Management Services)
• Student organizations virtual exhibit from the Virtual Museum of University History

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

• 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

Download event flier (pdf)

Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War
Thursday, March 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

The life of one of the most significant black leaders in the South during the Civil War will be the subject of a lecture Thursday, March 7 in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Historian David S. Cecelski will discuss his new book, The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War (UNC Press, 2012). The book tells the thrilling life story of Galloway, a runaway slave and staunch abolitionist who served as a Union spy and recruiter during the war.

The 5:30 p.m. event, sponsored by the North Carolina Collection, the Stone Center Library for Black Culture and History, and the Friends of the Library, is free and open to the public.

Born in Brunswick County, North Carolina, Galloway advocated for equal rights for African Americans, organized a Freedman’s Convention in Raleigh, and became one of the first black men to serve in the North Carolina legislature.

Cecelski has served three times as the Lehman Brady joint chair in Documentary Studies and American Studies at UNC and Duke. He is the author of The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (UNC Press, 2001) and co-editor of Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy (UNC Press, 1998).

Books will be available for sale and signing, courtesy of the Bull’s Head Bookshop.