2012-2013 Carolinian issues now online

As the spring semester closes, we have have added the past year's issues of The Carolinian to the online archive. Except for a fair number of issues from 1945, of which there are no known print copies in existence, almost the entire run of UNCG's student newspaper is currently available online. The bulk of these were digitized in 2010 and 2011 as part of the Lyrasis Mass Digitization Collaborative. New issues are added at the end of each academic year. Since 2012, these new issues have been published as "born digital" PDF files generated directly from the Carolinian's publishing system, resulting in better image quality and superior text search functionality.

Digital collections update

As we start the new academic year, it's time to unveil some new and expanded digital collections:

New collections:

• Greenhouse Cello Music Collection (Initial phase now complete)
  This collection features 230 items, including programs, annotated music scores, and album covers related to cellist Bernard Greenhouse, a revered performer and pedagogue known for his role as a founding member of the internationally renowned Beaux Arts Trio. We hope to expand this collection to include video and oral history materials in the coming months.
• Physical Education Pamphlets (Complete)
  This collection features 236 items created between 1838 and 1975 on such subjects as exercise and physical education, diet and nutrition, and health issues.
• WUAG Exhibit (Complete)
  This exhibit includes 136 photographs, documents, and other items from the records of UNCG's campus radio station that have been added to the University Archives digital collection. We will be adding audio and several interviews later this year.
  

Collections with significant additions:

• Greensboro Historical Newspapers (Initial phase now complete)
  This collection now includes all existing microfilmed issues (nearly 4000) of the Greensboro Patriot from 1826-1922 as well as a collection of World War II newspapers from Greensboro's ORD/BTC-10 army base. We have obtained copyright clearance to digitize the remaining issues of the Patriot and may do so if funding can be secured.
• The Carolinian, 1919-2008 (Complete)
  All existing issues (nearly 3000) of The Carolinian from 1919-2008 are now available online. Issues from 2008 to 2012 are currently being microfilmed and digitized and will be online soon. After that, we hope to add new issues at the end of each academic year.
  
• American Publishers Trade Bindings, Phase IV (Ongoing)
  Over 400 new items have been added in the past year.
• Oral History Collections (Ongoing)
  Approximately 60 new oral histories have been added since March, including 25 from the Rotary Club/Preserving Our History collection.
• Women Veterans Historical Project (Ongoing)
  Numerous oral histories, printed items, and photographs have been added.

Later this month, we will be unveiling the LSTA-funded North Carolina Runaway Slave Advertisements, 1751-1840 project, which contains around 2400 runaway slave ads that appeared in North Carolina newspapers in searchable full-text format.

We area also starting to work on Textiles, Teachers, and Troops: Greensboro NC, 1881-1945 and on the rest of year's roster of priority projects. More about these to follow:

• Manuscripts Scrapbooks
• American Publishers Trade Bindings, Phase V
• ASERL Center of Excellence for Nutrition: Government Documents Pamphlets
• Home Economics Pamphlets
• Greensboro Historical Newspapers, Phase II

New and expanded digital collections

The Digital Projects Team would like to alert you to several new and expanded digital collections that are now available from the University Libraries:

• Greensboro Pictorials Collection:  http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/GSOPics.php
  This collection features seven pictorial books documenting local businesses and institutions in Greensboro and Central North Carolina in the early part of the Twentieth Century. This was a collaboration with the Greensboro Historical Museum.
• Greensboro Patriot: http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/GSOPatriot.php
  Working with the Lyrasis Mass Digitization Collaborative, we are placing 4600 issues of a Greensboro weekly newspaper dating from 1826 to 1922 online. Currently, issues through 1888 are available. The remainder should be online within the next two to three months.
• The Carolinian: http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/Carolinian.php
  Phase II of this project will add issues of UNCG's newspaper from 1930-2005. Issues through 1956 are currently available online, while the remainder should be available by May. This project was also completed through the Lyrasis Mass Digitization Collaborative.

In addition, new material has been added to the following collections:

• Greensboro City Directories: http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/GSOcityDir.php
  Now includes directories through 1963. This project was a collaboration with the Greensboro Historical Museum and the Greensboro Public Library.
• Oral History Collections: http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/OralHisCo.php
  Several new transcripts have been added and there is also a new audio recording of an interview with Dr. Harold Schiffman, in whose honor our music library has recently been renamed.
• Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project: http://library.uncg.edu/dp/wv/
  Several new photos, printed items, and oral histories have been added.

Please take a few moments to look at some of these collections and let me know if you encounter any problems or have any questions.

There will be many more items coming online in the next couple of months, including the Physical Education Pamphlets Collection, selections from the Bernard Greenhouse Collection, an exhibit featuring records from WUAG, our campus radio station, and our NC ECHO-funded North Carolina Runaway Slave Advertisements project.

In addition, we hope to be moving to an upgraded version of the CONTENTdm software within two months. This should provide an enhanced user experience and a cleaner interface.

All our digital collections can be viewed at this link: http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/.

Updates

There’s been a lot going on in Digital Projects the past couple of months. Here’s the rundown of what we’re currently working on and how far we've gotten on each project:

• American Publishers Trade Bindings Collection (Ongoing)
  We are actively working on the fourth phase of this collection, which involves completing all titles in the Woman's Collection and the detective fiction sub-collection. We also hope to work on some user interface enhancements in the spring, following our CONTENTdm upgrade. 
• Bernard Greenhouse Project (Completion target: Spring 2012)
  This project will make available concert programs, photographs, correspondence, manuscripts, and interviews pertaining to the noted cellist and will be the first in what we hope will be many projects highlighting our important cello collections. A graduate assistant us working with the Libraries and the UNCG LIS Department to complete this project as part of the Real Learning Connections program.
• The Carolinian, 1930-2005 (Completion target: 2012)
  Issues from 1919-1930 were published several months ago. The remainder have been digitized and assembled. We are currently working on integrating an index--a work in progress for several years--into the metadata for the project. This project was undertaken in collaboration with Lyrasis through a Sloan Foundation grant.
• Greensboro Patriot, 1826-1922 (Completion target: Spring 2012)
  We will be publishing online the full run of Greensboro's weekly "newspaper of record" from the nineteenth century. Severl test issues from the Civil War era are already online. All the rest have been digitized and are being prepared for publication online, as we assemble the PDF files for each issue and create metadata. We also plan to publish an index of the earlier issues that was created several years ago. This project was also undertaken in collaboration with Lyrasis through a Sloan Foundation grant, and is part of our plan for a larger community-focused local history portal in coming years.
• North Carolina Runaway Slave Ads Project (Completion target: Spring 2012)
  This project, funded through LSTA funds administered by the State Library's NC ECHO grant program, will digitize and transcribe more than two thousand runaway slave ads that appeared in North Carolina newspapers between 1730 and 1841. A collaborative venture with North Carolina A&T State University, this project is expected to be of great value to historians and genealogists. We have digitized a high proportion of the advertisements and are now transcribing and extracting metadata. Our colleagues at A&T will begin working on ads that were not part of our original source material in January. Three student assistants are currently working on the project.
• Physical Education Pamphlets Collection (Completion target: Spring 2012)
  These 400+ pamphlets held by the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives document physical education and related activities over the past 150 years. Scanning is complete on this massive project (over 6000 pages scanned) and the pamphlets will be published online probably by early spring.
• University Archives Scrapbooks (Likely completion in 2013)
  We are digitizing approximately 110 scrapbooks that are part of UNCG's University Archives and were completed by campus organizations from 1917 to 1993. This has been a challenging project and we have uncovered new issues on a daily basis, but there is a wealth of information contained in these books and making them available online will allow us to preserve the originals, most of which are in a very fragile state.
• University Images Project (Ongoing)
  The University Archives photo collections are being reprocessed to facilitate digitization and  the first (and probably most difficult) part of this reprocessing, the Buildings and Grounds series, is nearly complete. We will be adjusting some of the items already uploaded to the online collection to "match" their new homes in University Archives, which will make both the physical photos and their digital surrogates easier to find.
• Women Veterans Historical Project (Ongoing)
  This is one of our signature digital collections, and we are currently working primarily on oral history transcription. However, a bigger project that will move the entire collection from a homegrown database platform into CONTENTdm, which will allow for easier updating and increased searching and browsing capabilities.
• WUAG/Dead City Radio (Completion target: Spring 2012)
  This project will digitize Dead City Radio, a zine published from 1985 to present by UNCG's student radion station, along with other material from the WUAG records, including playlists, program schedules, photographs, and some audio materials. Work will beging in January and will involve a practicum student from the LIS program at UNCG.

Campus Construction, ca. 1949

We found this interesting article while working on the Class of 1950 Scrapbook as part of the University Archives Scrapbook Collection. It details several construction projects on the Woman's College (Now UNCG) campus around 1949. Included are the original building of what is now Jackson Library, Ragsdale-Mendenhall residence halls, and the Home Economics Building (now Stone).

The article notes that the new $1,000,000 library building, which would open in 1950, "is designed to hold 300,000 books, about double the capacity of the present library" and goes on to discuss "the three soundproof audio-visual rooms" and the auditorium (now called Randall Jarrell Hall). The library was to have closed stacks, just like the Carnegie Library it replaced, but was expected to have a "much wider selection of general books, reference books, and periodicals" in open shelving.

There is also a discussion of the new dormitory, the interior of which was modeled after the already-built Weil-Winfield residence hall and of the many features of the new Home Economics building, which was a significant expansion of the existing building. Noteworthy were the new food storage facilities, the "air conditioned auditorium equipped for movies and television" and the textile research laboratories.

The last section discusses plans for the new infirmary (now Gove Student Health Center), the student union (now Elliott University Center), and additions to what is now the Petty Building. Noted modernist architect Edward Loewenstein was also working on plans for a gymnasium addition.

The early 1950s were obviously something of a building boom at UNCG.

Related:

• More photos of campus buildings, grounds, and views
• The Carolinian

It's all about newspapers

"Hostilities Commenced!"
Greensboro Patriot extra edition, 12 April 1861 .

If you'd told me a year ago that we'd be working on putting the complete runs of two newspapers online in 2011, I might have thought you were a bit crazy. But here we are, thanks to some one-time funding opportunities and the Lyrasis Mass Digitization Program.

We started out last year with the 1919-1930 issues of The Carolinian, UNCG's student newspaper, which provided a wealth of information about the early years of the University. The next project to go online will include the remaining issues through 2008; these issues should be online by the end of the year and they include coverage of activities surrounding World War II, the civil rights movement and desegregation of the University, the transformation of Woman's College into the coeducational University of North Carolina at Greesnboro, and more. The newspapers will be digitized from clean new copies of the microfilm masters held by the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives. The Carolinian project is part of a larger ongoing initiative to digitize thousands of photos, documents, and other items related to the history of UNCG. We hope to continue past 2008 and into the future using born-digital PDF files obtained directly from The Carolinian.

Also in progress is the digitization of issues of The Greensboro Patriot dating from 1822 to 1922. The Patriot was the weekly newspaper of record in Greensboro for most of the nineteenth century and it continued publishing through 1941. The issues currently being digitized cover the early years of Greensboro, the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, and Greensboro's rapid growth as a railroad and textile center in the early 1900s. The papers contain news, editorials, announcements, and advertisements that will be of interest to historians, genealogists, and anyone who has a passion for local history and culture. Like The Carolinian, the Patriot is being digitized using brand new microfilm copies obtained from the North Carolina State Archives, which should give us the best possible quality. This project, along with the Greensboro City Directories and Civil Rights Greensboro, are some of the first elements in what we hope will eventually be a larger local history portal. We hope to include the final two decades of the Patriot if copyright issues and funding can be worked out.

Next week: Thoughts on metadata and indexing for these and other mass digitization projects involving periodicals.