Celebrate Native American Heritage

Special Collections & Rare Books is pleased to exhibit materials from various collections depicting the history and culture of Native Americans.




The history of the American Indians; particularly those nations adjoining to the Missisippi [sic] East and West Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia: containing an account of their origin, language, manners, religious and civil customs, laws, form of government, punishments, conduct in war and domestic life, their habits, diet, agriculture, manufactures, diseases and method of cure ... / James Adair. London, E. and C. Dilly, 1775.

James Adair was born in County Antrim, Ireland and journeyed to America by 1735 where he became a pioneer, Indian trader, and author. He lived with and traded with the Catawbas and Cherokees; finally establishing himself among the Chickasaws of Mississippi.

Detail of Map:

original on view :

Celebrate Native American Heritage
an exhibit
November - December 2009
Second Floor Lobby, Main Building
Jackson Library

Trade Binding Images Now Available Through Public Catalog

The American Trade Bindings Digital Library ContentDM database has been up for over a month. [See earlier post.] Users can now access images through the public catalog now that code to the live database is moved to the public catalog. Images are shown in both the brief and full record displays.

If you want to see all trade binding images available in the public catalog, search "American trade bindings" in the "subject begins with" field on the basic search screen.

We’re now beginning the second phase of the project, adding images (and records to ContentDM) from the Girls Books in Series Collection, so the project will be growing over the next few months.

Special message from Paul Hessling :

Heartfelt thanks to the Cataloging Department’s intrepid student assistants, Callie Moss and also Keonna Harrison, for their work with editing the catalog records and adding genre terms, and to Terry Brandsma, SIRSI master, for making this all work in the public catalog.

Happy searching!

A Cloud of Death Engulfs a Campus: Typhoid Fever and UNCG in 1899

In November and December of 1899, the State Normal and Industrial College [now UNCG] faced a major crisis that almost shut down the school permanently after existing for only eight years. On November 15, 1899, Linda Toms, a student from Shelby NC, died suddenly from typhoid fever. Following her death, twelve more students would contract the illness and die prompting President Charles McIver to shut down the school in an attempt to stop the sickness from spreading.

At the time, the deaths of 13 students accounted for 3% of the total student population. Based on today’s enrollment numbers, a 3% death rate would equal 558 students! Also, roughly 12% of the students became ill in 1899 meaning over 2,234 students would take ill today based on the same percentage. Amidst the current worldwide scare of H1N1, the University Archives invites you to view its newest exhibit A Cloud of Death Engulfs a Campus: Typhoid Fever and UNCG in 1899 and look back at UNCG’s first pandemic and learn about the scare it faced 110 years ago.

- Sean Mulligan

Exhibit Dates and Location
October 7, 2009 - January 4, 2010
EUC Connector

Robert Watson : Retrospective

An Exhibit
September 14 - November 16, 2009
Hodges Reading Room

Bob Watson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and educated at Williams College (B.A.) and Johns Hopkins University (M.A., Ph.D.) after serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve in World War II; in addition he attended the University of Zurich as a Swiss-American exchange student. In 1952 he married Betty Rean and the next year joined the English faculty at the Woman's College of North Carolina for his first full-time teaching position. He remained on the UNCG faculty until his retirement in 1987, having obtained the rank of Professor in 1964.

An organizer and director of the formal MFA Writing Program at UNCG, he also was co-founder in 1966 (with Lawrence Reynolds) of the nationally acclaimed Greensboro Review.

The author of five collections of poetry, two novels, and two plays, as well as numerous other publications, Watson has received many honors for his work. In 1962 he was the first resident of North Carolina chosen to read on the Poetry Circuit, established by the UNC Press. His 1966 collection of poems, Advantages of Dark, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In 1972 he was invited by the Library of Congress to participate in their series of Poetry Readings under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund. In 1974 he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 1977 a grant from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters "for literary excellence and promise of important work to come."

11th Annual Women Veterans Luncheon on Saturday, November 14, 2009

This year our guest speaker is Brigadier General Clara Adams-Ender,U.S. Army, Ret. Adams-Ender is a graduate of North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro and served in the Army Nurse Corps from 1961-1993. In 1991 She was appointed commander of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, which made her the first nurse in army history to become the commanding general of a major military base.

General Adams-Ender will be speaking on "The 3 C's: Telling the Stories of Women Veterans."

Entertainment provided by the UNC Greensboro Spartones!

Schedule:

• 9:30 Hodges Reading Room, 2nd Floor Jackson Library: Doughnuts and Coffee and Collection Tour
• 11:30 Cone Ballroom, Elliott University Center: Exhibit and Social, UNCG
• Noon Cone Ballroom: Luncheon and Speaker

Cost:
— Women veterans: $10 —
(if you can afford it, if not please be our guest!)

— Guests: $15/person —

For information call (336) 334-4045

American Trade Bindings now Online

The American Trade Bindings Digital Library presents over 1100 book covers which chronicle the development of book binding in the United States. The ATB project contains a variety of both fiction and non-fiction titles, primarily from the Charles M. Adams American Trade Binding Collection, published between the 1830s and the 1920s.

American Trade Bindings Digital Library

The American Trade Bindings project primarily contains books from the Charles M. Adams American Trade Binding Collection, named in 1987 for the former UNCG librarian largely responsible for the collection’s establishment. The Special Collections & Rare Books Department of the UNCG University Libraries contains several other collections documenting book arts, include Artists' Books and Livres d'Artiste, Athenaeum Press Collection, and the Way & Williams Publishers Collection. Some selections from the Early Juvenile Literature Collection and the Woman's Collection are also available online through the ATB website. The project was managed and produced by the Digital Projects unit of the University Libraries.

Thank you to all staff who made this project a success!

The Ghosts of UNCG

Tales have long circulated about the ghosts that allegedly haunt the campus. UNCG’s most well known ghost reportedly inhabits Aycock Auditorium.

Aycock Auditorium

Raymond Taylor, who taught drama and was the director of dramatic activities on campus from 1921 until 1960, recounts his personal experiences with the ghost of Aycock Auditorium.

According to Taylor, an elderly lady once lived in a large house where Aycock Auditorium now stands. Lonely and unhappy, she one day went up to the attic and hanged herself with a rope from the rafters. When the house was torn down, she haunted the area until Aycock Auditorium was built in 1927, and then she adopted the auditorium as her home. Taylor told of an incident that happened on a hot day when he and the Aycock Auditorium janitor were working on a set for a play.

In order to be more comfortable he and the janitor removed some of their clothes. When Taylor went upstairs to dress he found his clothes disarranged and his watch chain arranged on the table in the form of a cross.

Students have given the Aycock spirit a name, they call her Jane Aycock, and say she is the daughter of the man for whom the auditorium was named; but Governor Charles Aycock had no daughter by that name.

Mary Foust Residence Hall

A ghost also allegedly haunts Mary Foust Residence Hall, which is named for Mary Foust, the daughter of the College’s second President, Julius I. Foust.

Mary Foust died during childbirth in 1925 and rumors have floated around for years about random “unexpected crying” and “funny noises” on the hall’s second floor.

Also, an unproven rumor circulates that in the 1950s, three nursing students hanged themselves from the attic rafters.

In the late 1960s, the Spencer Residence Hall ghost was known simply as “The Blue Ghost” or “The Woman in Blue.”

Bell Towers of Spencer Residence Hall

Students later gave her the name “Annabelle.” Annabelle is supposedly the spirit of a student who hanged herself years ago in one of Spencer Residence Hall’s bell towers; however, no suicide has ever been documented.

In the 1970s, Annabelle allegedly appeared as a blue shadow to staff members in the Spencer parlor, and there have been reports of a blue haze passing by a laundry room and of objects being flung across rooms.