RALEIGH–What do broadcast journalist David Brinkley, poet Carl Sandburg and award-winning actress Tess Harper have in common? They were all regular visitors to their local North Carolina public libraries. Now anyone can experience North Carolina library history online through Transforming the Tar Heel State: the Legacy of Public Libraries in North Carolina, an exciting new collection created by the State Library of North Carolina.
The collection showcases hundreds of historic items related to the development and impact of public libraries in communities throughout North Carolina. The collection enables users to view photographs, reports, postcards, posters and much more from their own computer. Users can browse the collection by county, format, date or topic, or keyword search on any subject of their choosing – the texts of all documents are fully searcha
ble.
The core of this collection has been digitized from the State Library of North Carolina’s Public Library History Files. These files contain photographs, reports, newspaper clippings, and other materials gathered by the North Carolina Library Commission from public libraries throughout the state. The materials span from the late 1800s up through the 1970s, with the majority of the materials dating from the 1940s and 1950s. The collection has been enriched by recent contributions of photographs and historical information from more than 40 North Carolina public libraries and the North Carolina State Archives and is part of the Department of Cultural Resources “Telling Our Stories” program.
The State Library of North Carolina develops and supports access to specialized collections for the people of North Carolina. To learn more, visit the Web site at: http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us. The State Library is a division of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, with information and podcasts 24/7 at www.ncculture.com.
